Culture and Society in the Last Days

The Olivet Discourse - Part 5 June 8, 2016

Culture and Society in the Last Days

Week 12 Page 1

Matthew 24:36

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” (NASB95)

We discussed the Times of the End last week

We learned…

No one knows means...

We also saw how that is a picture of the way weddings were done at in Israel during the time that Jesus is ministering

Jesus has answered the questions of his disciples

The events of the past few hours and days have been effectively summarized by the King

The King has been telling them the time of the Kingdom is not right now

Something which has been hinted out in the scripture, this thing we know as the Church Age, is going to be intervening

When Jesus makes the statement He makes in verse 36, He is alluding to the method and manner in which He will be returning

Remember, His return begins with the Rapture of His Church and concludes when He arrives in triumph saving His people and dealing with the enemy

There are several things He will be doing when He returns, but first, He wants to make sure His disciples understand conditions

By the way, several weeks ago I said the Rapture is not discussed in the Olivet Discourse, but the results sure are

The number one item Jesus talks about are some of the cultural conditions that will be evident at the beginning of this period

Matthew 24:37–39

“For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.” (NASB95)

This is not the first time that the disciples have heard this

In Luke 17, the Pharisees were asking about when the Kingdom would be coming

This is being asked after they had attributed the works of the Holy Spirit to the devil effectively ending the event taking place soon

This is not the Olivet Discourse, but sounds like it

As you will see, much of what the disciples have just been told they heard once before

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Luke 17:20–37

Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.” And He said to the disciples, “The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. They will say to you, ‘Look there! Look here!’ Do not go away, and do not run after them. For just like the lightning, when it flashes out of one part of the sky, shines to the other part of the sky, so will the Son of Man be in His day. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were

building; but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, the one who is on the housetop and whose goods are in the house must not go down to take them out; and likewise the one who is in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, on that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other will be left. There will be two women grinding at the same place; one will be taken and the other will be left. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other will be left.” And answering they said to Him, “Where, Lord?” And He said to them, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will be gathered.” (NASB95)

Prior to the Olivet Discourse, Jesus had discussed some of the same aspects of His return as He discusses just prior to the Crucifixion

He says the days leading up to His return will be like the Days of Noah and the Days of Lot

So what do we know about those days?

Genesis 6:1–13

Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God. Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth.” (NASB95)

Genesis 6 and Prior

Pre-flood conditions

Long life spans – 900 years

Large families

Totally different conditions than today

Water vapor canopy

Atmospheric pressure at least twice that of today – 14.7 psi today, 29.4 psi then?

Totally different biosphere

One land mass

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High population

Somewhere between 3 billion to potentially over 100 billion

Evidence of large cities in the Andes and in other places as well

High technology

Sons of Cain

High levels of wickedness

Violence

Evil

So, how big were the families? Just how many children did folks have?

The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters.

Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus : Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996).

Population growth formula

So How Rapid Did the Population Grow?

Multiplication was probably more rapid than assumed in this calculation, especially in the earliest centuries of the antediluvian epoch. For example, if the average family size were 8, instead of 6, and the length of a generation 93 years, instead of 100, the population at the time of Adam's death, 930 years after his creation, would already have been 2,800,000. At these rates, the population at the time of the Deluge would have been 137 billion! Even if we use rates appropriate for the present world (x = 1 and C = 1.5), over 3 billion people could easily have been on the earth at the time of Noah.

Henry M. Morris, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science, Appendix 6 (Baker Book House; Grand Rapids, 1984). This book gives many more examples of population growth rates, considerations of disease, war, famine. etc. Available from the Institute of Creation Research (ICR). PO Box 2667, El Cajon, CA 92021. Excerpt: Babel and the World Population: Biblical Demography and Linguistics.

Genesis 6:5

Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Externally – everywhere God looked – sin

Internally – all that man did was create new ways of sinning, in fact that is all they thought about

Random Observations

George Barna, Futurecast: What Today's Trends Mean for Tomorrow's World Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (June 1, 2011)

Days of Noah

Based on criteria developed by the American Psychiatric Association, our devotion to media content is literally an addiction—perhaps the most widespread and insidious addiction in our society today

Since 1980, the number of children born to unwed parents has climbed from 18 percent of all live births to 40 percent today

The nation’s attitudes toward gay marriage have continued to soften over time, faster than many social analysts expected. In 2003, 54 percent of survey respondents considered two homosexual men living together with a child to be a family; by 2010, the figure had escalated to 68 percent.

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Another quietly emerging alternative family form is the triad, or “polyamory,” in which three adults are married and become spouses to each other. While such unions are relatively rare—at least in the public’s view—they are also likely to expand in the future. The main support for such relationships comes from the notion that if marriage is to be defined by the participants—the underpinning of same-sex marriages—then if all three (or more) parties have genuine feelings for each other and are willing to make a public commitment to their joint relationship, then polyamory is no less valid a form of marriage than traditional or same-sex unions.

Most adults—and a vast majority of teenagers—no longer believe that absolute moral or spiritual truth exists. Relativism is the rule of the day: Your truth is your truth, nobody can dispute it for you, and everyone’s truth depends on the circumstances.

For instance, the 2010 study showed the following attitudes:

69 percent say divorce is morally acceptable (up from 59 percent in 2001)

61 percent describe gambling as morally acceptable

59 percent believe that sexual intercourse between an unmarried man and woman is morally acceptable (up from 53 percent in 2001 and 2002)

59 percent argue that medical research using stem cells from human embryos is morally acceptable (up from 52 percent in 2002)

54 percent claim that having a baby outside of marriage is morally acceptable (up from 45 percent in 2002)

52 percent see gay or lesbian relations as morally acceptable (up from 38 percent in 2002).

…we learned that more than half of all born-again adults also believe that cohabitation is morally appropriate; half say that entertaining sexual fantasies about someone other than one’s spouse is morally acceptable; and one-third condone the use of profanity in public and the viewing of pornography.

Luke 6:46

“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? ”

Matthew 7:22–23

“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’ ”

Luke 10:2

And He was saying to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

Mark 10:27

Looking at them, Jesus said, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.”

Revival is possible

Renewal is possible

It begins with each one of us individually

1 John 1:9–10

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.

Something else was going on in the days of Noah too

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Genesis 6:1–2

Genesis 6:3 & 4

Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” (NASB95)

What on earth does this mean?

Acts 17:11

Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance."

Albert Einstein

The first and most transparent is that divine beings came to earth, assumed human flesh, cohabited with human women, and spawned unusual offspring known as Nephilim. Naturally, this view requires seeing the giant clans encountered in the conquest as physical descendants of the Nephilim (Num 13: 32– 33).

Heiser, Michael S. (2015-09-01). The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Kindle Locations 3487-3490). Lexham Press. Kindle Edition.

“…sons of God”

What does this mean?

The first statement, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, presents the crisis. The sons of God in Hebrew is bnei ha-Elohim. This term, in the Hebrew Bible, is always a reference to angels, both good and bad ones.

Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Ariel's Bible Commentary: The Book of Genesis, 1st ed., 145 (San Antonio, TX: Ariel Ministries, 2008).

Job 1:6

“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. ”

בְּנֵיהָאֱלֹהִים – bnei ha-Elohim

Job 2:1

Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD.

בְּנֵיהָאֱלֹהִים – bnei ha-Elohim

Job 38:7

When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

בְּנֵיהָאֱלֹהִים – bnei ha-Elohim

Adam was also called this

In the New Testament, who else is called this?

Jesus Christ

Believers

Galatians 3:26

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

In the New Testament, we see references to these “sons of God” or fallen angels

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1 Peter 3:18–20

For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.

2 Peter 2:4

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment;

The word used for hell in the Greek is Tartarus. This is the only place it is used in the Bible

The name of the subterranean region, doleful and dark, regarded by the ancient Greeks as the abode of the wicked dead, where they suffer punishment for their evil deeds;

James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible : Showing Every Word of the Text of the Common English Version of the Canonical Books, and Every Occurrence of Each Word in Regular Order., electronic ed. (Ontario: Woodside Bible Fellowship., 1996).

Jude 6–7

And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.