But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. 31 And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.—Matthew 24:29-31
Pardon Me While I Let a Little Cat Out of a Very Big Bag
Of the things Christians are usually divided over, Jesus’ incarnational first coming seems to be a point of unity. We all agree that He was born a few years BC, which humorously might suggest that the Christ was born before Christ, a rather ironic blight upon poor Dionysius Exiguus’ dating system. Yet, notwithstanding a Scythian error or two, we all agree that Jesus lived to be less than 40, He died a horrific death at the hands of the Jews, He rose again visibly and bodily in Jerusalem, and He ascended into heaven in the early thirties of that first common era century. His Ascension into heaven not only ended His first incarnational coming, but it also ushered in His heavenly reign over His Kingdom, the Church, that continues down to this day.
Yet as clear as His first coming has been, there has been an unbelievable amount of confusion on when the second coming will occur. For instance, some—among the full preterist types—believe everything in the New Testament has already happened and that a future bodily coming of Christ is unnecessary or, at the very least, was not recorded in the Bible so we cannot expect it. On the other end of the eschatological spectrum, the full-fledged futurist types tend to quibble over whether Jesus’ second bodily coming will be a pre-tribulational, mid-tribulational, or post-tribulational escape via a wonkavator-like-rapture.
What very few seem to notice is that there are two kinds of divine comings in the Bible. There are the bodily comings where God takes on a human body, such as when He walks with Adam and Eve in the garden, passes by Moses, dances in a fiery furnace, comes as Lord and Messiah to the Jews, and returns bodily at the end of human history. All these we affirm. Yet, there is another kind of “divine coming” in the Bible, where God spiritually comes in judgment against a wicked nation that we must not overlook if we are going to understand this passage.
That is the eschatological cat I would like to let out of the end-times knapsack and that is where I would like us to dive in today. For clarity, I will provide 10 reasons why Jesus’ second coming has already occurred in the first century, but with that, I will give you the most important qualifier that is needed before I begin. Here goes…I believe Jesus will physically return at the end of human history. I believe that He will come back in bodily form, give us new spiritual bodies, and call us up to meet Him in the air (e.g. 1 Corinthians 15 & 1 Thessalonians 4). My contention in this article is that the “coming” Jesus is referring to in Matthew 24 is not the end of human history coming, but a divine judgment coming against the Jews for their covenantal infidelity.
To support this view, I will be giving 10 lines of cold hard Biblical data that come right out of the text. But, if you would like more information on what these two kinds of divine comings are (Physical Incarnational and Judgment Covenantal) and how they are used in the Bible (e.g. Isaiah 19:1), then see the article I wrote a few months back that covers this very topic.
For all others, onward!
Evidence 1: The Meaning of “Immediate”
Many, such as eminent New Testament Scholar, D.A. Carson, suggest a multi-thousand-year gap between verses 28 and 29 of Matthew 24. Those within that ilk conclude that our Lord is referring to the downfall of Jerusalem in AD 70 in verses 15-28, but then wrongly assume Jesus hopscotched 2000 years forward into the modern era when moving along to verse 29. This suggestion could be reasonable if there was a shred of evidence to defend it. Yet, the evidence is insurmountable in the opposite direction.
In fact, the insurmountable evidence I am speaking of rests on a single word… “Immediately”! Notice how the passages flow:
For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes even to the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be. 28 Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. 29 But, immediately after the tribulation of those days…—Matthew 24:27-29a
Assuming a multiple thousand-year gap between verses 28 and 29 is the scholarly equivalent of trying to sell ice to an Eskimo. To say it differently, it might be a tough sell. But, I suppose it could be done if there were actual contextual factors, that were right there in the text, alerting the reader that Jesus consciously intended to wax proleptically. But, this cockamamie thesis falls apart quicker than a house made out of toilet paper when you stop to consider what the word “immediate” means.
Not to state the obvious, but if verse 28 is referring to the downfall of Jerusalem, as many attest and we just proved last week, then verse 29 cannot refer to an entirely different era. It must happen immediately after the previous one, limiting its fulfillment to the first century.
Evidence 2: “All These Things”…
Before we get to the meat of verses 29-31, let us recall the sauce Jesus prepared for us in verses 34-35. He said:
Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.—Matthew 24:34-35
We do not have to know mathematics on par with men like Isaac Newton to understand that 34 is just a bit larger than 29, 30, or 31. And we do not require formal training from men like Noam Chomsky, to comprehend that “all these things” means all the things Jesus just said in verses 1-28. What we need is the courage of men like Luther, Calvin, and Knox to believe what Jesus said, even if it is difficult to imagine and especially if it messes with our theological system.
Let me say it plainly, verses 29-31 happened in the first century, in that generation, because Jesus said “All these things” would happen in a single generation in verse 34 and we believe that He meant it. This is the unavoidable conclusion you must come to unless you want to turn yourself into a human pretzel.
Evidence 3: The Sun, Moon, and Stars as Apocalyptic Imagery of Judgment
Jesus said:

But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.—Matthew 24:29

In the words of Ricky Ricardo, it looks like we have some “esplainin to do”. If we are positing that all these things happened in the first century, then it sounds like we are saying that the sun darkened, the moon stopped shining, and a host of stellar luminaries fell from out of the sky, all within a generation from Jesus speaking. To be fair, that is what I am saying, but not completely.
Like Carson and other scholars, I also detect a switch has occurred between verses 28 and 29. Yet, instead of seeing that switch happening in the timing of the prophecy’s fulfillment, I see the switch occurring in the kind of genre Jesus is employing. For instance, in verses 3-28, Jesus is using the normal kind of language one would use when speaking to a friend. He is answering their questions in a straightforward and dialogical way that the disciples accurately record through historical prose. This form of communication is straightforward, plain, and easily discernible.
Yet, as Jesus continues speaking, He switches to a common Old Testament form of communication that His first-century interlocutors would have easily comprehended. This switch was to the apocalyptic genre, which foretells future-oriented events through the lens of symbols. The word apocalyptic means “to reveal” and it does so through visionary, figurative, and metaphorical speech patterns that were common to His contemporaries but not so to the modern man.
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Not everyone sees God’s beauty. Some are “haters of God” that have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (Romans 1:23, 30). That’s why Samuel Parkison says there is an aesthetic component to salvation: when the Spirit regenerates us, he enables us “to behold the beauty of the Trinity mediated in Christ.” This new ability to see God’s beauty isn’t mere intellectual perception; it “includes the affections,” so we are stirred and drawn by his beauty (Irresistible Beauty, 15).

Mary Oliver once said, “Attention is the beginning of devotion” (Upstream, 8). Yet we struggle, don’t we, to set our minds on “the things of the Spirit” and “the things that are above, where Christ is” (Romans 8:5–6, Colossians 3:1–2)?
We know the mind attentive to the Spirit is “life and peace,” yet we’d blush to admit how often we reach for the empty stimuli of social media and news feeds. And it’s easy to wring our hands and declare that we’re uniquely handicapped by our Age of Distraction and the relentless competition for our attention. Are we really defenseless, though, doomed to distracted, ever-scrolling minds?
In the Footsteps of the Undistractable
In my own war against distractions, I find hope and help in saints who lived centuries before our digital age. Read slowly these words of Augustine, describing “the bridegroom who is beautiful wherever he is”:
He was beautiful in heaven, then, and beautiful on earth: beautiful in the womb, and beautiful in his parents’ arms. He was beautiful in his miracles but just as beautiful under the scourges, beautiful as he invited us to life, but beautiful too in not shrinking from death, beautiful in laying down his life and beautiful in taking it up again, beautiful on the cross, beautiful in the tomb, and beautiful in heaven. (Essential Exposition of the Psalms, 131)
If we had a time machine and could pull this man taken by the beauty of his Beloved into our digital age, would the wild horses of iPhones and earbuds drag his attention from God? By no means. The way Augustine talks about Christ convinces me that he could not not be captive to God’s beauty. He’s held firm and undistracted by the same one-thing passion that captivated David:
One thing have I asked of the Lord,that will I seek after:that I may dwell in the house of the Lordall the days of my life,to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. (Psalm 27:4)
Jonathan Edwards, another undistractable saint, found God not only beautiful but “the foundation and fountain of . . . all beauty” (Works, 8:551). In his sermon on “God’s Excellencies,” he told the congregation,
God is every way transcendently more amiable, than the most perfect and lovely of all our fellow creatures. If men take great delight and pleasure in beholding and enjoying the perfections and beauties of their fellow mortals, with what ecstasies, with what sweet rapture, will the sweet glories and beauties of the blessed God be beheld and enjoyed! (Works, 10:429)
Like Augustine, Edwards was enthralled by God’s beauty in Christ and would surely never trade those “sweet glories and beauties of the blessed God” for the empty cisterns of clickbait. The question is, would we? Can we ordinary saints living in the Age of Distraction be so captured by God’s beauty that we grow increasingly undistractable?
Beauty of All Things Beautiful
Before we answer, we should clarify what we mean by God’s “beauty.” Philosophers love to ponder the idea of beauty. When they meditate on what is truly beautiful, they are (perhaps without knowing it) granted glimpses of the God who is beautiful.
Beauty is the good, and God is most good (Psalm 119:68). Beauty delights and arouses desire, and God is our delight and the desire of our hearts (Psalm 37:4). Beauty displays perfection, and our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). Beauty shines with radiance and splendor, and Christ is the radiance of our God who is clothed with splendor (Psalm 104:1; Hebrews 1:3).
Beauty resounds in harmony and unity, and the unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit is the eternal perfection of harmony.
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There is no one-size-fits-all approach to cultural engagement. Christians with a different political calculus, with various regional sensibilities, temperaments, or experiences, may choose different courses of action. Debate over the best course of action is good and necessary. But culture warriors and culture engagers alike must be careful not to criticize unfairly or demean brothers and sisters whose different choices are not out of line with confessional faithfulness but flow from prudential judgments about how best to be faithful in the public square.

What should Christian public engagement look like as we move forward in this era? So far in this series, I’ve laid out some of the challenges facing traditional Christianity, and why it’s no surprise that some on the right claim a more combative posture is necessary for pushing back against harmful ideologies and practices in society.
Some Christians seem to believe that confrontational or combative approaches to public theology are inherently sub-Christian. This is not the case. Christianity has a long history of people willing to speak truth to power, to call into question the reigning ideologies of the day in the name of Christ the King.
Too often, the negative label of “culture-warring Christians” gets applied solely to Christians who oppose ideologies common on the left. When left-leaning Christians call out politicians or pastors who support sinful beliefs or behaviors common to the right, they get described as “prophetic” and “courageous.” This is unfair. Culture warring requires two sides, and one can be a left-wing culture warrior just as easily as a right-wing one.
But, speaking of being “prophetic,” sometimes, we think courage and boldness consist in bloviating bluster, “destroying” the opposition, “owning the libs,” or mocking the “nutcases” we find on the other side of the aisle. No. It takes little courage to be bold in opposing those whom your closest friends, family members, or online followers would expect you to oppose. What takes courage is to police your own side, to call out the problems not only in “the culture” but in your particular subculture, to buck the consensus of your own tribe and go against the people whose favor you usually enjoy. Compromise always involves capitulation, but capitulation can happen in more than one direction.
It seems likely that we will see a return to something akin to the older culture-war mentality among younger evangelicals in the years to come. Rather than rule that option out of bounds, I think it better to offer some encouragement and caution for younger evangelicals who are enthusiastic about this mode of public engagement.
The Reality of Christian Warfare
First, let’s dispense with the idea that warfare has no place in Christianity. I remember restraining my laughter when, 15 years ago or so, progressive Christians were protesting the “unbiblical” martial imagery of many Christians and churches. In taking aim at conservatives, they were shooting the Bible.
The language of spiritual warfare is pervasive in the Old and New Testaments. Jesus blessed the peacemakers and called us to turn the other cheek, and yet he said he came to bring division, not unity. His was the sword that separated son from father, and daughter from mother. The apostle Paul used martial imagery, as did the other apostles. We are on a spiritual battlefield. The response to such circumstances is for the church to be, dare I say, militant. Downplaying the stakes fails to do justice to the Bible itself.
In this battle, Christianity is “on offense”—not in a way that implies we should seek to be offensive, to take it as a badge of honor when others are offended. No, to speak of Christianity “on offense” is simply another way of describing the image Jesus gave us when he said that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. Jesus’s statement imagines the church moving outward, plundering hell, and pushing back the forces of darkness. Passivity has no place in the Great Commission.
The Danger of Misidentifying the Enemy
But the danger for Christians who apply the New Testament’s warfare motifs to political engagement is that we can easily misidentify the enemy. The apostle Paul makes clear we do not wrestle against flesh and blood. It’s the church moving forward into battle against the powers and principalities that hold people captive—against the evil forces that wreak havoc in our world, the supernatural realities the Bible describes as present and persistent.
We must distinguish the serpent from his prey. This is why we seek to convert our opponents, not own or destroy them. We seek their rescue, not their ruin.
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