The Olivet Discourse

The Dispensationalist views the Olivet Discourse as entirely future in their timing of the Kingdom. But the key to understanding this passage is to understand that the Jews that killed their own Messiah were the subject of the Olivet Discourse and not some future people.

To better understand this, let us first consider what the biblical definition of antichrist is. The biblical definition of antichrist is defined for us rather clearly by the Apostle John in his first epistle: “This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.” (1 John 2:22-23). So using that as our standard for truth and a launching point, I ask my reader to contemplate whether or not the unbelieving Jew was an antichrist or not? Did they not deny the Son? Of course they did.

These apostate Jews were soon to be cut off (Heb. 6:4-6) and the Old Covenant was soon to vanish (Heb. 8:13). Greg Bahnsen and Kenneth Gentry Jr. in their book, House Divided, declare that the crucifixion of their Messiah was the greatest sin of all history.1 They declare that although the Romans carried out the act of the crucifixion:

the onus of the divine curse falls squarely upon those who instigated and demanded it: many of the Jews of Jesus’ day. The biblical record is quite clear and emphatic: Jews were the ones who sought His death (Matt. 26, 24; John 11:53; 18; 19). This most heinous sin of all time committed by the Jewish nation…is a constant refrain in the New Testament (Acts 2:22-23, 36; 3:13-15a; 5:30; 7:52; 1 Thess. 2:14-15).2

Jesus Christ outlined their destruction in the parable of the tenants of the vineyard. Comparing the Scribes and Pharisees to tenants of the master’s vineyard representing the Children of God, or His Kingdom. The tenants got greedy and beat up and killed the messengers the owner sent to collect his dues and when the landowner sent his own son, the wicked tenants killed him too (Matt. 21:39). Jesus asks the Scribes and Pharisees what should happen to these wicked tenants and they answer by stating they should suffer wrath and death by the landowner. Jesus tells them you have rejected the chief cornerstone which is Christ, “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation, producing the fruit of it. And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” (Matt. 21:43-44).

Later Jesus tells them again, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you did not want it. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate!” (Matt. 23:37-38). Note that it says your house is left to you desolate, not your house will one day be rebuilt and I will come back to it. Jesus then says to His disciples, regarding the Temple as it stood, “there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Matt. 24:1-2). He explains to His disciples that the Temple with which they can visibly see with their eyes historically would be destroyed.

So the disciples having every reason to be curious ask Jesus later at the Mount of Olives to explain to them when the house would be left desolate (Matt. 23:38), when the Temple would be destroyed (Matt 24:2). And Jesus tells them, “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matt. 24:34).

Throughout Scriptures, ethnic Israel is compared to a garden and vineyard. Jesus compares them here to a fig tree:

And He was telling this parable: “A man had a fig tree which had been planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and did not find any. And he said to the vineyard-keeper, ‘Behold, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree without finding any. Cut it down! Why does it even use up the ground?’ And he answered and said to him, ‘Let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in manure, and if it bears fruit next year, fine, but if not, cut it down.” (Luke 13:6-9).

Jesus spent three years of His ministry as the Lord of the Vineyard going throughout Israel seeking repentance and good fruit. The problem is He didn’t find any, so Jesus “cursed the fig tree, saying, ‘Let no fruit grow on you ever again.’ And immediately the fig tree withered away (Matt. 21:18-19). The same would be true of barren, unrepentant Israel.”3 Likewise in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus looks upon Israel and laments:

And as He approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He cried over it, saying, “If you knew in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” (Luke 41-44).

Jesus is lamenting for this people because the time of their visitation from God came and they didn’t recognize Him instead they played the harlot against their Husband.

It is my belief that the people took upon them the mark of the beast. They cried out “We do not want this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14) and “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15). They forsook God in the flesh and would rather worship man. When Jesus was carrying His cross days after being welcomed in by waving palm branches, the mob now cried out ‘Crucify Him’. Jesus Christ did not say much to His own defense, nor did the Scriptures record Him saying much during his walk to Calvary. But He did specifically stop to tell the women something,

Daughters of Jerusalem, stop crying for Me, but cry for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, ‘FALL ON US,’ AND TO THE HILLS, ‘COVER US.’ (Luke 23:28-30).

This lines up with what he says will happen in Revelation 6:16 during the wrath of the Lamb, but the key is, Jesus was speaking directly to the women of that generation. Great judgement came upon Israel in 70ad, and the Old did indeed become obsolete as prophesied in Hebrews 8:13.

One more thing to consider is the language used of Christ coming in the clouds in judgement over Jerusalem. The Dispensationalist would clearly argue for a literal interpretation to be taken here. Bu, did God not use Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians to judge Jerusalem (Jer. 25:8-9)? Did God not use the Assyrians to judge the Northern Kingdom of Israel (Isa. 10:5-6; 2 Kings 18:12)? Clearly God uses nations to judge His people and seeing as Jesus is God could He not use the Romans and the other nations involved in the war against Jerusalem between 67ad and the final destruction in 70ad?

Similar language is used throughout the Old Testament to show signs in the heavens. Jesus coming in the clouds of judgement, and the sun and the moon being darkened and the stars falling (Matt. 24:30) can be likened to, “For the stars of heaven and their constellations; Will not flash forth their light; The sun will be dark when it rises; And the moon will not shed its light” (Isa. 13:10). This passage is referring to the judgement God will bring upon Babylon which we know is past tense considering that the Medo-Persian Empire conquered them. We see this figure of speech being used again in Ezekiel 32:7 when describing Pharaoh of Egypt and his judgement.

Endnotes

1 Greg L. Bahnsen and Kenneth L. Gentry, House Divided: The Break-up of Dispensational Theology (Tyler, Tex: Institute for Christian Economics, 1997). Pg. 166.

2 Bahnsen and Gentry. Pg. 167.

3 Chilton, Paradise Restored. Pg. 77.