Bible Study on Matthew 24, verses 32 to 51, Watch therefore

 

Matthew 24:32 ¶  Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: 33  So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. 34  Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. 35  Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. 36  But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. 37  But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38  For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, 39  And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 40  Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. 41  Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.  42  Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. 43  But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. 44  Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. 45  Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? 46  Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. 47  Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods. 48  But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; 49  And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; 50  The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, 51  And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

 

For verse 32 see;

 

Song of Solomon 2:11  For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; 12  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; 13  The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

 

The destruction of the city and the temple will tell them that the things Christ told them about are ready to come to pass. The destruction of the temple signifies the time of the Gentiles which will end with the translation of the Church, the thousand-year reign of Christ, and the judgment of the unsaved dead. Every event of history since then has been simply a reshuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic. Nations are being prepared, empires swirl around the drain, and all will be ready for their last stand against Christ in the millennium.

 

The generation that sees the rapture, the translation of the Church happen, will live to see it all happen. No man on earth knows when these things will happen. It will be like the days of Noah until the Flood came. The rhythms and celebrations of life will continue until the wrath of God is revealed. Then, as Jesus describes in detail the elect shall be removed. What will He find us doing when this time comes? The implication in 48 is that this is a false Christian, one of the tares mentioned in a previous parable, who while claiming to be a servant is not truly a servant and what could have been theirs is granted to others he would not deem worthy. There will be plenty of people who are not raptured or translated who will cry out, “why did I not go with them?”

 

And don’t think that, oh, things are so bad now, this must be the end, because they will not be as we think.

 

…for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

 

1Thessalonians 5:2  For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

 

2Peter 3:10  But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Bible Study on Exodus 3, verses 1 to 6, the angel of the LORD appears to Moses

 

Exodus 3:1 ¶  Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. 2  And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. 3  And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. 4  And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. 5  And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. 6  Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.

Moses leads the priest of Midian’s flock to a remote part of the wilderness, the backside of the desert. The mountain of God, even to Horeb shows that by connecting with the word even that Horeb is the mountain of God.

1Kings 19:8  And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.

Sinai was the name of the area.

Exodus 19:1  In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. 2  For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount.

So, Sinai and Horeb will be used interchangeably for the name of this mountain.

1Kings 8:9  There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the LORD made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt.

Exodus 31:18  And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God…32:4  And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

Psalm 106:19  They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image.

Malachi 4:4 ¶  Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

The angel of the LORD is one way the presence of Jehovah God is manifested in our reality.

Isaiah 63:9  In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.

The angel of the LORD is Jesus Christ who led the Hebrews in the wilderness.

Judges 2:1 ¶  And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.

Which the New Testament makes very clear is God Himself.

Galatians 4:14  And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus.

Hebrews 1:3  Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

God the Father, the soul of God, the seat of His will, is a spirit and cannot be seen.

John 4:24  God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

John 1:18  No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

But, in this case, God manifested Himself in a bush that burned but was not consumed, in a fire that did not consume. This attracts Moses’ attention and God speaks to him out of the fire.

Then, God demands that Moses respect that the area around this bush is holy ground, separate to God. Here is one definition of what it means to be holy or separated unto God. But, just remember that it is separated unto God by God. Something is holy because God says it is holy, not because you say it is holy.

Numbers 6:5  All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto the LORD, he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow.

In the following verse God requires the successor of Moses, Joshua, to show the same reverence.

Joshua 5:15  And the captain of the LORD’S host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so.

It is then that God identifies Himself as the God of Moses’ ancestors, the fathers of the Hebrew people. Moses was afraid to look at this presence of God then.

Bible Study on Matthew 24, verses 4 to 31, Christ preaches on the end times, part 2

 

PART 2 There will be a temple rebuilt and there will be the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, showing that he was not talking about the era he lived in when he wrote;

 

Daniel 9:27  And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

 

Daniel 12:11  And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.

 

Antiochus Epiphanes, a type of the Antichrist after Daniel’s day, sacrificed a pig on the altar and offered up prayers to Zeus.

 

The defiling of the new temple will take place in the middle of a week of years and last for 3 ½ years. An organization called The Temple Mount Faithful is focused on rebuilding the temple.    

 

Then, Christ talks about the Jews final persecution, the Time of Jacob’s Trouble mentioned in Jeremiah 30 and in Revelation, chapter 12.

 

Jeremiah 30:6  Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness? 7  Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.

 

Revelation 12:14  And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time (3 and a half years), from the face of the serpent. 15  And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. 16  And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. 17  And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

 

Don’t believe any man who says he is Christ even if they seem to perform signs and wonders possibly deceiving the very elect, He tells these believing Jews and then explains how He will appear as lightning flashing from the east to the west. He then describes conditions that remind one of the Book of the Revelation.

 

Revelation 6:12  And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; 13  And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. 14  And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 15  And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; 16  And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: 17  For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

 

The people of the earth will mourn and wail when they see Him.

 

Revelation 1:7  Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.

 

The Rapture or Translation of the Church could be described as this passage ends although the use of And doesn’t always mean something that directly follows another. And can just add additional information without indicating a time or demanding that the event after and must be the next event. This verse got me wondering about whether this placed the translation or rapture of the Church at the end of the Tribulation as some people say until, as I read other things in Genesis and outside of the Bible how and can be used to insert information that was not spoken of previously not necessarily meaning that it followed after the last events described. So, I am not trying to identify the time of the Rapture, which is a great topic for a Bible Study.

 

I’ll give you an example. “Joe was a very successful engineer even up until his 70s. And he got his engineering degree from MIT.” This is more used in conversation than in formal writing. Just a thought.

Bible Study on Exodus 2, verses 16 to 25, the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage

 

Exodus 2:16 ¶  Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17  And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. 18  And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day? 19  And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock. 20  And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread. 21  And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter. 22  And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

The priest of Midian, we will come to know as Reuel and as Jethro. It is not uncommon for a person to have two names. For instance, my brother’s name is Douglas and also Brent as at different times of his life, for various reasons, he has preferred one over the other. In addition, we have seen that some names in the Bible that appear to be given names are actually titles. It is possible that either Jethro or Reuel is a title or it is likely that they are both names for the same person.

I suspect Reuel is a personal name, used only once here with the variant spelling of Raguel used in Numbers 10:29, and Jethro, which we will come to later, is a more formal name.

Moses, a bold man, probably skilled in the warrior arts of Egypt and wearing the garb of his former station in life, defended the daughters of the priest of Midian in their efforts to feed their own flock of sheep against shepherds who apparently bullied them.  He was given sanctuary by the priest of Midian and eventually a daughter to take as a wife, named Zipporah. She bare him a son named Gershom, which in the context means a stranger in a strange land to be understood as a foreigner. Moses suffers the worse kind of alienation. He did not belong anywhere. As the adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter he was always a Hebrew yet his own people regarded him as a member of the oppressing Egyptians and now he has fled as a fugitive to seek refuge in a desert place with people who were not his people. Sometimes, we know that God has to bring us to a desert place in our lives to prepare us for His use, a state of mind where we feel as if we have no place where we belong.

The stage is being set by God for some great events in God’s plan of reconciling man to Himself, nothing like of which has been seen since the Flood of Noah’s time or the dispersal at Babel.

Exodus 2:23 ¶  And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. 24  And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25  And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them.

The Pharaoh that sought to kill Moses has died. But, the descendants of Jacob are still struggling as slaves under hard work. They prayed to God for deliverance. It must have been pretty painful. We have only to look at our own experience with racial slavery in America to see how awful it can be to live under those conditions; a despised, hated race serving in hard bondage to masters and mistresses who can have you killed and do whatever they wish to your person. But, God’s plan is unfolding in His own time.

We do not know who these Pharaohs were although many have tried to guess. One problem is that kings were not liable to make monuments to their defeats only their victories. In fact, like the communist North Vietnamese in the war with America and South Vietnam who declared every defeat a victory, it is more likely that the ancient kings would twist the truth to glorify themselves. Be careful about accepting scholarly opinions which are based on limited and tainted evidence as most of the truth of history is buried in the dust and no amount of archaeologists’ spades and shovels will ever dig it up. Trust the Bible only, God’s preserved words given to us for our learning and understanding. As Paul explained the purpose of these histories of God’s ministry of reconciliation of man to Himself;

Romans 15:4  For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

Bible Study on Matthew 24, verses 4 to 31, Christ preaches on the end times, part 1

 

Matthew 24:4 ¶  And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. 5  For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. 6  And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7  For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. 8  All these are the beginning of sorrows. 9  Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. 10  And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. 11  And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. 12  And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. 13  But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. 14  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. 15  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:) 16  Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains: 17  Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: 18  Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. 19  And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! 20  But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: 21  For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22  And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened. 23  Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. 24  For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. 25  Behold, I have told you before. 26  Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. 27  For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 28  For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. 29  Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: 30  And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31  And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

 

There will be many in history who will claim to be the Messiah or Christ. A book by a Rabbi Hillel Silver, written, if I am not mistaken, as a doctoral dissertation in the 1920s was entitled Messianic Speculation in Israel. Silver outlined how, in the last 2,000 years, many have come forward claiming to be the Messiah for the Jews or declaring that they knew when the Messiah would arrive, and then to declare that they knew when the end of the world would be. A list of Messiah claimants can be found on the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

 

As a modern example in the 20^th century a rabbi named Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who lived from 1902 to 1994, was claimed by many of his adherents to be the Messiah-to-come for the Jews.

 

Verses 6 and 7 have been expressed throughout history. Don’t focus on a single event as there will be constantly wars and rumors of wars. These things will happen but the end is not here yet. They will, though, at the end come to a crescendo like the climax of a symphony in our minds, threatening the destruction of all there is. Followers of Christ will be persecuted around the world. It has been said that today there are more Christians martyred for their faith each week than when pagan Rome was at its full power. Others have said that more Christians have been martyred in the last century than in all previous centuries combined as Satan’s wrath builds to a fury.

 

Followers of Christ will be caused to stumble, will betray each other, and even turn each other into their persecutors to save themselves. Because of iniquity many will be cold to the gospel truth who may have even been somewhat zealous in previous times. This is no more apparent than in the last century of Christianity in the industrialized countries of the West where religion is often nothing but a sham or an excuse to do wickedly to others in God’s name.

 

John 16:2  They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

 

False prophets, false Christs, false teachers will deceive multitudes at this time. While these things mentioned have always happened they will be very prominent toward the end.

 

Luke 18:8  I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

 

Holding fast to the end is of the utmost importance no matter how bad things get.

 

Revelation 2:10  Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

 

1John 5:4  For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. 5  Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?

 

Revelation 2:7  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God,,,11  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death…17  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it…26  And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:

 

Revelation 3:5  He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels…12  Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name…21  To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

 

Revelation 21:7  He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

 

The entire world will hear the gospel of Christ before the end comes and is that not a possibility today?

 

Bible Study on Exodus 2, verses 11 to 15, Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh

 

Exodus 2:11 ¶  And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. 12  And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. 13  And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? 14  And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known. 15  Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well.

Now, we have evidence that Moses’ past and ethnicity were not kept from him. He went out to see the burdens placed on his brethren. He had not grown up ignorant of who he was and where he came from. We don’t know how this played out in his life, if he was mocked or derided because of who he was or if the protection of his adopted mother, Pharaoh’s daughter, prevented that.

He saw an Egyptian hitting a Hebrew, one of his brethren, and thinking no one saw him, killed the Egyptian and buried his body. Clearly, Moses’ upbringing did not keep him from rage at the injustice being done to his brethren. Like one of the slave rebels in the Southern United States before the Civil War such as Nat Turner or Denmark Vesey, to a lesser extent, his rage manifested itself in violence. Moses’ act did not seem to involve premeditation, though, except that he looked first to see if he was being observed and mistakenly thought he was not.

A lesson is learned here for us that even when a member of a despised race is given privilege in the oppressor culture it does not necessarily prevent them from empathizing with their own people in their suffering. It’s a blood thing.

Moses, the next day, cannot understand, as many African-American activists like Malcolm X have commented on, why the Hebrews who are beaten down resort to beating each other. But, instead of understanding he gets the accusation thrown in his face, the acknowledgement that he is guilty of murder. There were witnesses.

Here in verse 14 we have a way the Bible defines itself presented to us as well as evidence of the authority of an ancient ruler to lead and to judge. See in this verse that a prince and a judge are synonyms. Note the cross-reference here as the martyr, Stephen, inserts ruler for prince in this allusion to verse 14;

Acts 7:27  But he that did his neighbour wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?

This combined the roles of political leader and judge of civil matters is something we have separated in our form of government. The Founders of America, basing the idea of separation of powers on the writings of the French political writer and Enlightenment philosopher Baron de Montesquieu in his book The Spirit of Laws, fell upon this idea as essential to good governing. But, in the ancient world the absolute ruler was not only a leader but he made laws and judged cases. See this reference to God Himself in Isaiah.

Isaiah 33:22  For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us.

The God of creation is the absolute ruler of the universe from whom flows all the laws of physics and, indeed, all reality, and from whom there is no appeal. We can only seek His favor, His blessing, His kindness, and His mercy.

It probably did not take much to give the Pharaoh a justification to kill this Hebrew upstart whom his daughter saved against his will and command years before. But, Moses fled to the desert, to the land of Midian.

Midian was the son of Abraham and Keturah, his wife after Sarah died. Strong, in his dictionary, calls them Arabs. Some authorities say they dwelt in the northwestern Arabian peninsula on the east coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, on the northeastern tip of the Red Sea. This will be important later for the exodus from Egypt. As the earth continued and continues even today to dry out from the disaster of the Great Flood this desert region may have had more vegetation then than it does today. Paleoclimatologists who study evidence of ancient weather suggest that it was greener and wetter in years past than it is now. Some of what are thought of as the oldest human remains have been found there.

In the Bible, a desert is a wilderness, with sparse populations of humans or none at all. See the synonymous relationship between desert and wilderness with solitary and dry and desolate.

Exodus 19:2  For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount.

Deuteronomy 32:10  He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

Isaiah 35:1  The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.

Jeremiah 50:12  Your mother shall be sore confounded; she that bare you shall be ashamed: behold, the hindermost of the nations shall be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert.

And here, in this passage of prophecy against Israel that defines what without form, and void from Genesis 1:2 means, the unstable and empty earth, a wilderness, we see;

Jeremiah 4:23  I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. 24  I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. 25  I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. 26  I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger. 27  For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.

Today, this area is called the Tabuk province or region, one of the 13 provinces of Saudi Arabia. 

Bible Study on Matthew 24, verses 1 to 3, the disciples ask Jesus some questions about the end

 

Matthew 24:1 ¶  And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. 2  And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. 3  And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

 

Some of you are pretty sure about when the events as described are going to happen so I’m not going to argue with you or imply that I am sure about when certain things will take place, most notably the Rapture of the Church. As Jesus leaves the temple with His disciples He lets them know that this magnificent temple, began by Zerubabel hundreds of years before, after the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Solomon’s Temple;

 

2Chronicles 36:19  And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof.

 

Ezra 5:2  Then rose up Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and began to build the house of God which is at Jerusalem: and with them were the prophets of God helping them.

 

…and finished by Herod the Great, history tells us, will be utterly destroyed and it was so in 70AD.

 

The Jews would rebel against their Roman overlords and fight among themselves as Jerusalem is besieged by Roman general and future emperor, Titus, son of the Emperor Vespasian. The temple will burn, something Titus insisted was accidental and against his specific orders. The Arch of Titus, which was built in Rome to commemorate Titus's victory in Judea, depicts a Roman victory procession with soldiers carrying spoils from the Temple, including the Menorah. According to an inscription on the Colosseum, Emperor Vespasian built the Colosseum with war spoils in 79 CE – possibly from the spoils of the Second Temple, Wikipedia tells us.

 

It is now only represented by the famous Wailing Wall, represented because the Wailing Wall may not have been part of the actual Herod’s temple.  

 

It is here that the disciples ask about Christ’s return to rule Israel and the end of the world which gives us a clear context of what is to come next. A type of Bible interpretation called Preterism, which originated in the Catholic church or at least was first fully expounded on by that Church at Rome, insists that all of these events took place when Jerusalem fell, that Christ is actually, if not physically, ruling over Israel and the events of Revelation have already taken place. There are full Preterists and partial Preterists, though.