The reason the church of Jesus Christ is still standing strong today is that a generation of rock-hard believers endured ultimate sufferings with great joy and great hope, turning the world upside down with their great faith. Instead of kicking up our feet and being repulsed by discomfort, I am praying this generation of Christians will learn from our elders, get ice in our veins, and turn this world upside down for Christ once more. They probably will not kill us for doing so, but we should give them every reason to want to.

THE RUINING OF GOOD WORDS AND THE EPICENTER OF CRAZY

Amid a bounty of red-capped toadstools, psychedelic peace signs, and long-haired hippies, the word “gay” lost its mirth and merry undertones morphing into the new moniker for sodomy in the 1960s. This same kind of word assassination has taken place today changing common sense words like mother into “birthing-person” or cold-blooded murder into “women’s health.” If I had to guess one of the top job skills on Satan’s resume, I might be inclined to say word-shifting, but that is the topic for another blog. For now, let it suffice to say that good words often lose good meaning and when that happens “the crazy” ensues.

In the evangelical world, our little rotten apple hasn’t fallen far from Babylon’s big tree. Instead of mythologizing what a woman is to fit a transgender agenda, we have mythologized what a tribulation is to fit a left-behind storyline. And, as a result, a century and a half of Christians have become necessarily confused by what Jesus meant in His Olivet Discourse. Today, we want to continue unraveling this mangled cord and share a sober Biblical view that reclaims this forgotten Biblical word.

“Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name” – Matthew 24:9

A BRIEF WORD ON OUR METHODOLOGY

To begin, I will not be gratifying the popular seven-year super-cycle of future cataclysmic phenomena as a viable option for what this word means. The Bible tells us not to answer a fool according to his folly and taking that approach would certainly be akin to groveling in the eschatological pig slop. Further, we will not be citing newspaper articles about Israel, hunting down red heifers, or treating isolated Bible passages like bread crumbs in a forest leading us to grandma’s house. Or, however, those metaphors go.

In this blog, we will look at the words that are on the page, ask some common sense questions, assume a very helpful body of data that has been covered in previous episodes and blogs, look at some Scriptures that prove the point, and provide a Greek reference on the side to make sure we sound really smart. To that end, let us gayly begin.

THE MEANING OF WORDS

The first word of importance in this sentence is “they”. In this context, “they” does not refer to a YouTube social influencer’s ever-changing pronouns, but to a specific group of people. That group is not a 21st-century cohort of liberal American God-haters, but a first-century cadre of Jewish and Gentile God-haters who were scattered throughout the Roman empire.

Remember, Jesus is educating His disciples on when their temple would be destroyed. He is helping them understand what signs they are going to see that will accompany this event and showing them how it will change the course of redemptive history (See Matthew 24:1-3). Jesus is not lapsing into a moment of temporary ADD to harangue about a future seven-year tribulation that was irrelevant to His disciples. He is appropriately warning them that “They” will be beaten, bruised, killed, and persecuted. He is telling them what they will soon be facing in their service to Him.

Second, the next very technical word we must understand is “you.” In this sentence, “you” is not referring to “us” or some future audience of post-moderns who will rip this passage clear out of its context. “You” meant the very disciples Jesus was speaking to since that is how conversations work. Think about it, when you are looking right at the person you are speaking to, answering specific questions they directed at you, and then pull “you” out of your repertoire of available words, the only conceivable reason for doing that would be if you were talking to them and about them. In this scene, Jesus is talking to His disciples about a tribulation they will face in their lifetimes. This point is essential for us to grasp.

Third, knowing this, we must understand what the word “tribulation” means if we have any hope of understanding what Jesus is saying. According to our really smart Greek lexicon, the English word for tribulation comes from the Greek word “θλῖψις” (Th-lip-sis). Instead of a plague-filled future septennial, the word means troubles or trials that will inflict distress, and suffering on men (See the following passages where the word θλῖψις is used: Matthew 13:21; Mark 13:19; John 16:33; Acts 11:19; 14:22; 20:23; Romans 5:3-5; 8:35; 12:12; 2 Corinthians 1:4, 8; 7:4; Philippians 4:14; Colossians 1:24; 1 Thessalonians 1:6; 3:3-4; 2 Thessalonians 1:4; Revelation 1:9). This is precisely what Jesus was prophesying over His disciples and this is exactly what happened to them in the years ahead.

THE LABOR MOTIF

Now, before citing some examples of tribulation from the New Testament, I want to share a brief reminder about the Labor motif that is found within this chapter. Like a woman in labor, the birth pangs will begin with a certain level of intensity. Then, as time moves along, the pain from her contractions will inevitably grow in magnitude and frequency as the pregnancy nears its terminus. In much the same way, the signs Jesus has been forecasting begin with increasing intensity until everything Jesus predicted comes true (Matthew 24:8).

So far, we have looked at signs like earthquakes and famines which increase in intensity from the time Jesus is raised in AD 30 to the downfall of Jerusalem in AD 70. We have also shown how the proliferation of false prophets and messianic figures only became worse as the hour drew nearer to the fall of the city. Now, we will look at how the sign of persecution and tribulation went from bad to worse in the Church’s first forty years of existence.

THE INFANT CHURCH IN TRIBULATION

Like all good evangelicals, I affirm that life begins at conception in the womb. Yet, the joy of a plus-signed pregnancy test will soon come with morning sickness, foot aches, hormone imbalances, and forty weeks of discomfort and bloating, all eclipsed by the tremendous pain of human life moving her way down the birth canal to make her appearance known. In much the same way, the church was conceived at the resurrection of Jesus Christ and grew rapidly during those first 40 years of gestation. But it wasn’t until the great pains associated with the downfall of Mosaic Judaism that she was thrust upon the world, as the only way to know and approach the one true God, Yahweh. In this prophecy, Jesus gives signs that will cover the whole forty-year period, but like labor will increase in intensity as the event draws near.

For instance, Jesus told the disciples, even before He went to the cross, that they would soon be arrested, betrayed, persecuted, murdered, and handed over to Jewish synagogues where all these abuses would take place (Matthew 10:17-25; 23:34-37). Jesus even warns the disciples that a future hour would come when the murder of Christians will be viewed as religious piety by the apostate Jews (John 16:2). Those tribulations would begin in a matter of days from the crucifixion.

For instance, not many days after that first Pentecost, the apostles were arrested by the Jews for teaching about Jesus in Jerusalem (Acts 4:1-3). After being released from prison, they were jailed again just one chapter later (Acts 5:17-20). On this occasion, an angel from the Lord helped them escape so that they could go on preaching Christ in the city. That day of preaching caused the apostles to be arrested a third time, whipped the same way Jesus was whipped before He was crucified, and released with injuries and scars that would cling to their bodies for a lifetime. This was the beginning of their tribulations.

Soon the Jews would take to murdering Christians in the street as they did with Stephen (Acts 7:54-60). They would send young zealots like Saul of Tarsus as hitmen to find, arrest, and even kill believers who were hiding in various cities (Acts 8:1-3). When one of those hitmen converted to Christianity, the Jews sought to have him murdered as well (Acts 9:23-25). The book of Acts even calls this a period of “great” persecution (Acts 8:1), or maybe one might be tempted to call it a “great tribulation” for the church.

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