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When is Jesus coming back?

Some people hear a question like that and they're like, ooh, this is going to be an exciting thing to talk about. And some people are like, man, I should have slept in late today.

Surely it must be soon. I mean, look at the world around us, right? It's got to be soon. We hope so. Many people would say, yes, we know that he's coming back soon. Or if they don't have an outright yes to that, they'll say, well, we at least know the general time frame has to be soon. And sometimes those people who are telling you, yes, we can at least know the general time frame, will then have a paperback you can buy for $14.95 and find out all about it.

Since the 1970s, there's been an explosion of end times related media. It goes back further than that, but there was a real explosion in the 70s in Christian publishing and books with titles like The Late Great Planet Earth, The Day Approaching, or my favorite title I found, 2022 to 2042: The Final Days of Civilization.

If I sound a little sarcastic as I'm reading those titles, it's because I have read some of those books. And I've also read Mark 13, our chapter here, where in verse 32, Jesus says, “Concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” But maybe the people writing prophecy books know better than Jesus.

It's very easy to be consumed with looking for signs of the times, drawing up charts of what future events will hold, and in doing so completely miss the point of biblical prophecy and apocalyptic literature. So that's an error on one side, to just get consumed by it. But there's also an error on the other side, if in reaction to some of the crazy that's out there, we fail to see the genuine important role that prophetic literature plays in the Scriptures.

Over 30% of the Bible is prophecy. Now, a lot of that prophecy is already fulfilled. But nonetheless, this is a huge portion of God's Word that falls into the genre of prophetic literature. But when we're looking at it—looking at any part of the Bible, but prophecy especially—we have to be careful to let the Bible itself drive our thinking and drive our priorities.

It's good. There's nothing wrong with having our own questions, having our own priorities when we come to the Bible and looking for Scripture's answers to those questions. But we need to be careful in imposing our current questions on the ancient text. God's Word does have answers, but sometimes what God's Word does is actually change our questions. The Bible should be the source of our questions as much as it is the source of our answers, which is a long way of saying in Mark 13, I'm looking for the intent of Jesus, the speaker, and Mark, the author.

I'm not concerned first and foremost when I read these kinds of texts with how to make sense of news reports out of Russia or Iran or Israel. So as we come to Mark 13, we're looking at one of the most contested, the most controversial passages in the New Testament. It and its parallels in Matthew and Luke are called the Olivet Discourse. And as many commentaries as you read, you will find twice that many opinions on what this text is talking about.

And I want to be clear that there are disagreements over this passage between Christians who love the Lord, love His Word, and genuinely want to understand it. Some of the imagery in this text is just hard to understand and to make it all fit together. And these details can be disagreed upon by Christians in good faith. And while I won't say that it doesn't matter what you believe about it, I think we can disagree sometimes about the details and still agree on the main point that Jesus is trying to drive home. I hope I'll show that as we go through the sermon.

We don't have the time and you probably don't have the interest