The Tribulation Already Happened
Watch this blog on this week’s episode of The PRODCAST.
INTRODUCTION
From what we have observed so far, God was going to rip the Kingdom away from the Pharisees and give it to tax collectors and prostitutes because the Jews were no longer bearing fruit. We saw how Jesus promised in a third parable, in Matthew 22:1-14, how God was going to send His armies upon the rebel city of Jerusalem and set that great city on fire, because they killed His messengers and refused to come to the wedding of His Son. We have looked at how the Jews did not take kindly to this message and did everything in their power to humiliate Him and turn the crowds against Him (Matthew 22:15-46), which did not ultimately work. And then, in a final blistering string of judgment woes, Christ evoked the covenant curses from Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 in the form of seven woes upon that city (Matthew 23:13-36), which meant that all of God's covenant fury was about to be poured out on them.
Then, as Jesus and His disciples walked out of the city and up to the Mount of Olives, Jesus took some of the waning moments before His death to ensure that the disciples understood what He was saying. For His part, Jesus was not preparing them for a way-off period of time before these things would occur. Jesus promised them that within a single generation, which is forty years, the temple would be left desolate, the city would be destroyed, and Jerusalem would face the consequences for killing the prophets, murdering God's Son, and butchering His disciples all over the Roman world. And, to make sure the disciples were not confused about the timing of the Jewish destruction, He gave them detailed signs to be on the lookout for so that they would know when all of these things were occurring. He told them that there would be a notable rise in false messiahs, false teachers, and antichrists (Matthew 24:5, 11, 24). He told them that even though they lived under the famed Pax Romana, they would hear about wars, rumors of wars, and famines and earthquakes that would rob the land and the empire of its peace (Matthew 24:6-7).
Now, today, we are going to be looking at another sign that Jesus gives, which is that those first-century disciples were going to go through all kinds of painful and toilsome tribulations at the hands of the Jews. As we will see, Jesus and the rest of the New Testament reveal a story of ferocious Jewish hatred of Jesus and His Church, spilling out in violent persecutions, martyrdom, and oppression for forty paralyzing years between the resurrection of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem.
But this is only part 1 of a two-part series called "THE MURDERING JEWS AND FIERY TRIBULATIONS." Today, we will lay the groundwork to understand what the word Tribulation means and how the majority of Christendom has misunderstood it, punting it into some eschatological future. To combat that error, we will look at the totality of what this word means, what the Bible says about it, what extra-Biblical sources contribute to this understanding, and how this concept relates to the current redemptive status of the Jewish people.
In this episode, we'll only cover half of that goal by focusing on three key areas:
The meaning of the word Tribulation in its original Greek language.
What it means in the context of Matthew 24.
Two striking examples from the Septuagint will help us understand The Tribulation and The Great Tribulation—two distinct events that must be understood within their first-century context.
By the end of today's episode—and with the help of next week's installment—you will see beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Tribulation has already occurred. It was a Jewish-inspired terror campaign against the early Church, and for perpetrating these tribulations upon Jesus' bride, the Jews themselves were brought into a Great Tribulation in AD 70.
Next week, we'll expand on this foundation. We will look at the New Testament case for Jewish-led tribulations, examine extra-Biblical sources that confirm these events, and briefly explore the current state of the Jewish people and what hope, if any, remains for them after such monstrous crimes against God and violations of His covenant.
This could be the most ambitious episode of the PRODCAST I have undertaken yet, and I hope all of the information I am providing brings clarity to the topic, encourages you, and helps you live more ardently for Jesus in our world.
So with that, thank you for all of your support for this channel, thank you for all the ones who have joined as members of this channel, and now, let us dive in, looking at the linguistic case for a first-century tribulation!
PART 1: THE LINGUISTIC CASE OF TRIBULATIONS
THE TRANSITING OF WORDS
We live in an era where words have the fluidity of a cold glass of water. Not only are good terms redefined every time someone has a case of the feels, but coherent terms are being stretched like Gumby to fit whatever grotesque ideal our confused culture is propagating. Take, for instance, a word like gay, which was turned from an innocent form of merriment to the kind of lurid sexual deviance that caused God to obliterate Sodom. By hijacking and disfiguring the term in the style of Pablo Picasso, those guilty of absolute abominations assuage and sear their conscience by changing the term.
This, along with a host of other words or phrases like calling a woman a "birthing person" and calling abortion "healthcare," is evidence of a large-scale industrialized transing of terms. And, while it may seem like a leap, there's a similar disfigurement of terms that's taken place within the Church, where dispensationalists have mangled words like "antichrist" and "tribulation" to mean something entirely different than what these terms actually mean in their original context. In the same way that a very handsome and healthy young boy, under the pressure of a woke mother and a degenerate health care system, can be hacked up and morphed into a pitiful-looking eunuch with man boobs that society calls a "real girl," so too the term "tribulation" has been mutilated, hacked, stretched, and transfigured till its original meaning is all but lost. In the words of Inigo Montoya, to the dispensational, I will say, "You keep using that word, "tribulation," but I do not think it means what you think it means." This begs the obvious question, what does it mean?
THE TRANSING OF "TRIBULATION"
If dispensationals are to be believed, the word "tribulation" refers to a singular event in the future that is so nasty that it should engender anxiety and panic for all who miss the heavenly tractor beam to the sky, affectionately known as the rapture. For those who are "left behind" and miss the short yellow bus to heaven, an Antichrist-led dystopia will then be unleashed upon the earth for seven hellish years of unparalleled tribulations. This will be coupled with computer chips in the back of the head (probably administered by Elon Musk or one of his robots), hailstones the size of basketballs will land on your grandmother, and helicopters that appear like locusts upon the horizon will do the bidding of this calculating man or lawlessness, plunging the world into unspeakable horrors. Instead of careful exegesis, we've been spoon-fed this kind of eschatological malarky that does not actually grapple with what the word means and reads more like a sub-par knockoff of the Hunger Games than anything close to what Scripture is presenting. And I hate to be rude here, but as you will see from everything I will be presenting today, for so many people in the Church to peg "tribulation" to a future end-of-the-world event is one of the great lies Satan has foisted upon the Church who is content to live in the most easily disproved error imaginable!
And, tragically, the Church has suffered mightily for this error! After a century and a half of mutilating and frankensteining the word "tribulation," ripping it out of its Biblical context and from the context of the Olivet Discourse, the Church has become an eschatological hypochondriac, expecting disaster around every single turn. And, because behavior is always downstream of beliefs, this soiled take on tribulations has led to hysteria, panic, despair, and doom that has settled into the soul of evangelicalism as syphilis did on Al Capone.
By adopting such a flawed eschatology and bogus definitions of terms, a once militant and active church that built Christendom was reduced to a clique of world-escaping heaven gazers who frankly lost the culture. As the Church retreated from the world and waited for our ticket out of here, we took our salt and light with us, abandoning our society to the darkness and the decay they are prone to. All of this points to the unmistakable fact that while the Church complains about the sorry state of the world, much of the blame for its devolution lies squarely at her feet. We have become a church that buried her talents in the sand while waiting for our master to return, which is both shameful and wildly unfaithful. But, hey, at least we were doggedly pro Israel… Am I right?
THE ACTUAL MEANING OF "TRIBULATION"
With all of the buffoonery that could be mentioned, I think it is time for us to transition away from the linguistic failures of dispensationalism and begin building a case for what "tribulation" actually means. And to that end, we need to begin with the word "tribulation" itself, which comes from the Greek word thlipsis (θλῖψις). According to the preeminent Greek lexicon of our day, which is known as the BDAG, thilipsis literally means: "Pressing or pressure." But, since the term is frequently used in a metaphorical sense, BDAG also gives the following secondary meaning when the term is applied to human suffering:
"trouble that inflicts distress, oppression, affliction, Tribulation - A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 457.
But the BDAG is not alone. The Louw Nida lexicon based on semantical domains defines this word as:
"trouble involving direct suffering"- Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 242.
The dictionary of Biblical languages says roughly the same thing, defining the term as:
"trouble, distress, oppression, Tribulation - Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament) (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997).
Far from the word Tribulation pointing to a specific window of increased peril just before the end of the world, the best linguistic scholars of our day universally agree that this is a general term that describes any period of intense pain or suffering. In the same way, English speakers use very similar phrases to communicate distress, grief, or discomfort because it is a shared human experience; Greek speakers could talk about the death of a loved one as being "crushing" to them. When they did that, they communicated about personal tribulations. When a man describes how a particular situation at work was laying "heavy" upon him, he is talking about going through tribulations. Again, this is not a special word that necessarily applies to the end of humanity; it is a prevalent word that shows up hundreds of times all over the Bible to describe the suffering of God's people, which we will get into in just a moment.
For now, when Jesus looked His disciples right in the eyes and warned them of "tribulation" in Matthew 24:9, He was not pointing to a novel period known cryptically as "the tribulation" but was telling them that they were very soon going to be walking through a very troubling period of time. He was warning them that things in their world were about to change significantly and that being a follower of Jesus would be a perilous reality for them in the years ahead. They were going to be crushed by Jewish persecutions, pressed in on every side, and if it were not for the grace of God, the bloodthirsty Jews would have murdered and martyred every follower of Christ on earth because they were filled with a kind of demonic hatred for Jesus. This is why Jesus says, if they hated me, then they also will hate you too, because I am in you (John 15:18-19).
And, just in case there are some who remain unconvinced, remember that Jesus promised His disciples that everything He predicted would occur within a single generation (Matthew 24:34). That means everything had to occur within forty years, or Jesus would be a false prophet and would have died justly for His blasphemies. Pay attention to what I am saying, if there had not been a rise in false prophets and antichrists in that generation if the Pax Romana had not been broken by wars and rumors of wars in that generation, if the peace of the earth were not shaken by earthquakes and seismic famines in that generation, and if the peace of the Church were not violently disrupted by Jewish-led tribulations and persecutions in that generation, then not only was Jesus a false prophet worthy of being stoned to death, but He could not be your savior, His death would have been in vain, and your salvation would be meaningless. That is what is at stake here! This goes far beyond just the quibbling over the meaning of words! Either He is who He says He is, and everything He said happened in the time frame He allotted, or He is a crook, a liar, and a deceiver who cannot be trusted.
This is the linguistic case for how the word "tribulation" refers to the suffering that the first-century Church would undergo at the hands of the bloodthirsty Jews. Now, I would like to turn to the Biblical case and talk about how the word "thilipsis" is first used in the Septuagint in striking ways, then in the New Testament to describe the unique sufferings that the people of God would undergo, and how all of this supports our theory that the tribulations Jesus predicted, have already occurred.
PART 2: THE SEPTUAGINT'S CASE FOR TRIBULATIONS
Now, without getting into a full-blown case for what the word "thilipsis" means in the LXX, I would like to show you two Old Testament examples that will prove our point. Of the 133 uses of the word Thilipsis in the Septuagint, two of them are remarkably striking and help us understand what Jesus means by the Tribulation in Matthew 24:9 and The Great Tribulation in Matthew 24:21, which, as we will see, are two distinct events.
The first use of the word to describe the "tribulations" shows up in the Exodus, where the people of God suffered under Pharoah, King of Egypt. And we will see after examining this Exodus scene how these kinds of tribulations are precisely what Jesus is predicting that the early Church will go through at the hands of a new Egyptian Esque enemy. The second use of the term "tribulation" that we will look at is an even greater kind of "tribulation" that Jesus Himself calls the "Great Tribulation," which does not apply to the Church but applies to the Jews who will suffer the same fate as Old Testament Egypt, coming under the fury of God's wrath. And we will see how this tragic end to the Jewish covenant is predicted with uncanny accuracy 1500 years before Jesus stated it in Jerusalem.
But, to start, let us look at the Exodus example of the word "tribulation" which Jesus alludes to in Matthew 24, in order tosee the kind of suffering the early Church would undergo.
SECTION 1 TRIBULATION, THILIPSIS, AND THE EXODUS
In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, the word thlipsis (θλίψις), translated as "tribulation," appears 133 times and occurs in every major section of the Old Testament, which demonstrates how common the word truly is. This word does not describe a period of novel eschatological suffering at the end of human history, but instead, it is a very common descriptor for pain, pressure, and suffering experienced by God's people throughout history.
Of those 133 uses, the plight of the Israelites in Egyptian slavery serves as one of the clearest examples of thlipsis, a term explicitly used in Exodus 4:31. The text reads:
"And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord was concerned about the sons of Israel and that He had seen their affliction (thlipsis), they bowed low and worshiped." - Exodus 4:31
Here, thlipsis describes the crushing weight of Pharaoh's oppressive regime, a burden that grew increasingly unbearable as their deliverance drew near. As you may recall, the more Moses sought their freedom (at least initially), the more Pharaoh's cruelty escalated—demanding the Israelites produce the same number of bricks without providing any straw (Exodus 5:6-19). From this pivotal scene in redemptive history, a precedent emerges: thlipsis (tribulations) often intensifies for God's people just before freedom and redemption arrive.
Furthermore, this pattern highlights a striking contrast: the enemies of God—those inflicting thlipsis—often appear to escape judgment for a time. Yet this season of apparent impunity is fleeting. In Egypt's case, it culminated in God unleashing devastating plagues upon Pharaoh and his people, ultimately leading them to their destruction in the Red Sea.
Now, when Jesus warns His disciples of Tribulation in Matthew 24:9, He is intentionally invoking this same Exodus scene. Just as Pharaoh tightened his grip on the Israelites before their liberation, Jesus predicted that the first-century Church would face growing persecution from the Jewish leaders, who had become a kind of "Pharaoh" to the Church in their opposition to God and His people. This is not a linguistic coincidence but reflects the deliberate way Jesus frames the tribulations of His people as part of a covenantal pattern of thilipsis in Scripture.
This Exodus symmetry goes deeper than mere analogy; it is a profound theological statement about who Jesus is and what His mission entails. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus consistently positions Himself as the new and greater Moses, leading a new Israel into a new kind of deliverance. For instance, just as Moses was born under the threat of a tyrant king who sought to kill all the male Hebrew infants (Exodus 1:22), Jesus was born under Herod's genocidal decree (Matthew 2:16). Similarly, as Moses led God's people through the waters at the Gulf of Aqaba, symbolizing their deliverance from their captors (Exodus 14:21-22), Jesus inaugurated His ministry by passing through the waters of baptism (Matthew 3:13-17). He then concluded His ministry by calling all the world to follow Him through the waters of baptism (Matthew 28:19), signaling that His mission initiates a new kind of Exodus for the people of God.
Moreover, Jesus reinforces this theme by teaching the people from a new mountain, giving them a new law, and offering Himself as the final and perfect sacrifice. These parallels make it unmistakably clear that Jesus sees Himself as the true and better Moses, fulfilling a Moses-like role in bringing deliverance, guidance, and redemption to the people of God.
Thus, in Matthew 24, when Jesus, the greater Moses, predicts a coming thlipsis, He is pointing to a period of intensifying persecution for His disciples—persecution that would come not from the Egyptians, but shockingly, this time it was coming from the Old Covenant Jews. Just as Pharaoh increased the thlipsis on Israel before God set them free, so too the descendants of Israel would intensify the "thilipsis" against the early Church. And, just as it happened in the days of Moses, the Church would be set free, and the oppressors would be put down by the fury and wrath of God. Just as Pharaoh and all his chariots were drowned in the waters of Aqaba, the unfaithful Jewish nation would face a torrent of divine wrath in the judgment and devastation of Jerusalem.
This deliberate use of Exodus imagery assures Jesus' followers that "thlipsis" is not a sign of God's abandonment of them as a people but a hallmark of how God accomplishes redemption. Like Israel in Egypt, the early Church would endure great suffering, but it was within this suffering that God's power and deliverance would shine most clearly. Jesus, the true and better Moses, would lead His people not only out of oppression but to conquer the nations. Unlike Moses, who was kept out of the promised land due to His sin, Jesus will lead the people of God to plunder and conquer the nations until every nation on earth is filled with people who obey Him.
SECTION 2, THE GREAT TRIBULATION, THILIPSIS, AND COVENANT CURSES
The second use of the word "thlipsis" that I would like to explore is an even darker and more terrifying example, found in Deuteronomy 28:53-55. In this chapter, God outlines a long list of blessings that His people will receive if they obey the terms of the covenant. But if they refuse to obey, God reveals a series of curses so chilling that they send shivers down the spine. He paints a grotesque and stomach-turning picture of what will happen if His people utterly abandon their covenant with Him—depicting unspeakable horrors, madness, and depravity that defy imagination.
This passage is not just a warning but a vivid portrayal of how far humanity can fall when it turns away from God. The descent into thlipsis here serves as both a covenantal consequence and a theological statement about the destructive power of sin. It reminds us that God's judgment is not arbitrary but deeply connected to His holiness and the covenant relationship He established with His people. Such a warning serves as a sobering call for repentance and a deeper reliance on His grace to avoid the depths of despair described in these verses, which say this about the nation of Israel, who wholly and finally break their covenant with God:
"Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, during the siege and the distress (thlipsis) by which your enemy will oppress you. The man who is refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile toward his brother and toward the wife he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain so that he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his children which he will eat, since he has nothing else left, during the siege and the distress (thlipsis) by which your enemy will oppress you in all your towns." - Deuteronomy 28:53-55
Let the weight of those words sink in for just a moment: parents were gnawing on the flesh of their own children, so driven to madness that the delicate and refined among them were reduced to snarling, feral beasts, hoarding scraps of human meat in a frenzied fight for survival. This is the calamitous future God promised to Israel if they betrayed their covenant with Him. In this passage, "thlipsis" is not just a general kind of suffering—it is a multiplied suffering dialed up to a hellish degree, the sort of torment that warps the soul and annihilates the boundaries of decency: A Great Tribulation.
And this is precisely what happened. When the Romans encircled Jerusalem in AD 70, the Jewish people trapped inside the city spiraled into a nightmare that even the most hardened minds would struggle to comprehend. Famine gripped every household, reducing families to skeletons of their former selves. Starvation's icy fingers tightened their grip until parents did the unspeakable—boiling tiny bodies in oversized caldrons to secure their next meal. With the light in their eyes growing dull, like a psychopath who has grown accustomed to murder, parents chewed on the carcass of their children like an ogre in the night, no longer understanding how deplorable they were behaving. Madness had settled into their souls. A once proud nation was reduced to depths of insanity unspeakable. The stench of death hung thick in the air as neighbor turned against neighbor, the living squabbling over the corpses of the dead, gnawing on scraps like rabid dogs.
This isn't just history; this is thlipsis in its most visceral, soul-wrenching form. It is the brutal fulfillment of Deuteronomy 28's prophecy—a prophecy that made it clear what covenant rebellion would cost them. The siege of Jerusalem, with its rivers of blood flowing down from the temple, the bodies strewn and piled up all over the city, and the cannibalistic horror that was witnessed in the town, was the culmination of centuries of covenant unfaithfulness, a moment when the Jews, who were meant to be God's light to the nations, for her crimes, were plunged into the deepest darkness.
This is the coming tragedy that Jesus is speaking about in Matthew 24. When He warned His disciples of coming tribulations, He spoke of the persecutions His followers would endure at the hands of their Jewish oppressors. The early Church would be slandered, hunted, and crushed under the same thlipsis that had plagued God's people for generations in Egypt. But, when He spoke of the "great tribulation," a tribulation so severe that it can barely be described with human language, He was pointing to the ultimate judgment awaiting those who spit in the face of God and broke covenant with their King. The city that murdered its Messiah would soon drown in its own blood, and its temple, that former fortress of God, would be torn apart brick by brick until there was nothing left. That, my friends, is the Great Tribulation Jesus warned was coming in Matthew 24 and guaranteed was coming when He evoked those seven woes in Matthew 23.
The Tribulation we are talking about this week and the Great Tribulation we will cover in a different episode are not future-oriented, end-of-human-history events but historical realities that have already unfolded in the first century. Just like the Exodus, where the children of Israel underwent a kind of Tribulation before the Egyptians were plunged into the Great Tribulations, the early Church also walked through fierce tribulations before the Jews underwent the Great Tribulation Jesus promised. Exodus 4 and Deuteronomy 28:53-55 prove these two kinds of tribulations exist, and the way Jesus speaks about these two kinds of tribulations shows us precisely what is about to happen in first-century Judea. Now, understanding this tribulation symmetry that exists with the Exodus, it is time for us to turn to the book of Revelation to see how all of these themes tie into that great apocalyptic masterpiece.
PART 3: THE APOCALYPTIC THILIPSIS
SECTION 1: THE CONTINUITY OF TWO OLIVET DISCOURSES
Matthew 24, often called the Olivet Discourse, stands as one of the most dissected, debated, and frequently misunderstood passages in the New Testament. Yet, when we allow Scripture to interpret Scripture, its clarity emerges with a brilliance that should leave us trembling in awe. Revelation—John's Olivet Discourse—is not some disconnected apocalyptic hallucination. It is the inspired companion to Matthew 24, sharpening its edge and amplifying its thunder. Together, they unleash a torrent of prophetic fire, burning through false eschatologies and exposing the naked truth of God's judgment and redemption.
Why is this connection critical? Because many Christians stumble into Revelation like lost wanderers in a labyrinth of cryptic symbols, imagining a far-off dystopia when the devastation was already at their doorstep. This error blinds us to the terrifying precision of God's covenantal justice. Revelation and Matthew 24 are not disparate fragments; they are twin swords forged to cut through the lies of dispensationalism and unveil the glory of Christ's dominion. Buckle up because once you see the connection, the entire framework of Revelation will explode into vivid clarity, leaving no room for sentimental or cartoonish interpretations.
SECTION 2: THILIPSIS AND REVELATION
In Matthew 24, Jesus speaks of thilipsis (Tribulation) as an inevitable crucible for His followers and a harbinger of judgment upon apostate Israel. This isn't some distant seven-year horror film marketed by dispensationalists; it's the gut-wrenching reality faced by the early Church and the impending doom of Jerusalem in AD 70. The Tribulation described is not an epoch of Hollywood fantasy but a covenantal earthquake that shattered the old world.
Revelation picks up this theme with unflinching ferocity. In Revelation 1:9, John declares himself a "companion in the tribulation." Not just any tribulation, but the Tribulation—the same catastrophe Jesus prophesied. Revelation's judgments—the seals, trumpets, and bowls—are not random explosions of chaos but calculated acts of divine vengeance, echoing the covenantal curses of Deuteronomy 28. This isn't speculative eschatology; it's a covenantal reckoning.
Dispensational eschatology—with its helicopters masquerading as locusts and barcode-marked foreheads—deserves the scorn of every serious Bible student. Revelation is not about a dystopian future but the catastrophic demise of a covenant-breaking Israel. It's the end of a world where temple sacrifices reigned and Levitical rituals cast their flickering shadows. The message is clear: The old covenant order has been obliterated, making way for the unstoppable Kingdom of Christ.
SECTION 3: EGYPTIAN THEMES AND THE NEW EXODUS
The parallels between Matthew 24 and Revelation are breathtaking, particularly in their shared use of Egyptian imagery. As established in Part 1, Matthew's tribulation narrative draws heavily on the Exodus story. In both, God's people endure tribulations before their deliverance while their oppressors face unparalleled devastation. Revelation cranks up the intensity, presenting a cosmic Exodus where the Church becomes the new Israel, and apostate Judah dons the role of Egypt.
Consider the plagues. Revelation showcases rivers turning to blood (Revelation 8:8), darkness swallowing the land (Revelation 8:12), and demonic locusts tormenting the wicked (Revelation 9:3). These horrors are not arbitrary; they mirror the plagues of Egypt, now unleashed upon apostate Israel. Judah's rejection of Christ makes her the new Pharaoh, stubbornly defying the God of heaven and suffering the same catastrophic end.
Jesus' warning in Matthew 24:16 for the faithful to flee the mountains finds its counterpart in Revelation 12:6, where the woman (representing the faithful Church) is carried into the wilderness for divine protection. The pattern is unmistakable: God shields His people amidst Tribulation while raining down wrath upon their oppressors.
Revelation's narrative crescendos with the fall of Babylon the Great, unmistakably Jerusalem—the city that killed the prophets and rejected her King. This is the ultimate Exodus: the saints delivered, the oppressors destroyed, and the covenantal stage reset for the reign of Christ. Jerusalem, like Egypt before her, collapses under the weight of divine judgment, her temple reduced to rubble, her privileges stripped away, her lampstand snuffed out.
SECTION 4: CURSES, WOES, AND REVELATION
Deuteronomy 28 serves as the grim backdrop for the prophecies in both Matthew 24 and Revelation. The blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience outlined in the Torah find their ultimate fulfillment in the catastrophic events surrounding AD 70. As highlighted in Part 2, Jesus' blistering woes in Matthew 23 mirror the covenantal curses of Deuteronomy. Revelation takes these themes and unleashes them with ferocious clarity.
The seven seals, trumpets, and bowls are not random acts of cosmic chaos but precise outworkings of covenantal curses. The imagery of famine, pestilence, and sword in Revelation 6:8 echoes the terrifying warnings of Deuteronomy 28:21-25. The cries of martyrs under the altar (Revelation 6:9-10) reverberate with Deuteronomy 32:43, where God promises vengeance for the blood of His servants. The gruesome plagues in Revelation 16—boils, blood, and scorching heat—are the Deuteronomic curses come to life.
The fall of Babylon the Great in Revelation 18 is the final nail in the coffin. Just as Israel was warned in Deuteronomy that disobedience would lead to exile and ridicule, Jerusalem's fall becomes a public spectacle of divine wrath. The lament over Babylon's destruction (Revelation 18:9-19) is the funeral dirge of a covenant-breaking nation that reaped what it sowed.
This is no sanitized Sunday school lesson. This is the gut-wrenching reality of covenantal justice. For apostate Israel, Revelation is a dirge of death. For the faithful remnant, it's a triumphant anthem of deliverance. Like the Israelites in the first Exodus, the saints are brought safely through the waters of judgment into the glorious Kingdom of God.
SECTION 5 THE TRIUMPH OF THE LAMB
Matthew 24 and Revelation form a unified symphony of judgment and redemption. Together, they unveil the terrifying justice and unshakable sovereignty of God. This is not the story of a passive Christ, wringing His hands as history spirals out of control. This is the story of the Lion of Judah, roaring over His enemies, rescuing His bride, and establishing His Kingdom.
The tribulations of this world—whether in the first century or the twenty-first—are not random. They are the deliberate outworking of a divine plan orchestrated by the Lamb, who was slain and now reigns. Revelation 11:15 thunders this truth: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever." Let the skeptics rage and the dispensationals repent. We go marching ever onward.
CONCLUSION
From the moment Jesus warned His disciples about the tribulations ahead, history unfolded exactly as He promised. The early Church faced relentless pressure—arrested by Jewish leaders, stoned by angry mobs, and hunted by emperors who reveled in their suffering. Yet, through it all, they remained steadfast, proving that even in crushing trials, God's power is made perfect in weakness.
Today, we've seen how the term "tribulation" was never meant to evoke futuristic panic or dystopian dread but rather an actual, historical period of suffering endured by the early Church. It was a time marked by opposition from the Jews, the fulfillment of covenantal curses, and, ultimately, the birth of a victorious, unshakable kingdom under Christ. The persecution was great, but the triumph was greater.
But this is just the beginning. Today, we laid the foundation by examining the linguistic and Old Testament case for Tribulation. Next week, we'll take it even further, exploring the New Testament case for Jewish-led tribulations, the extra-Biblical evidence for their opposition to the Church, and finally, a sobering yet hopeful look at the current state of the Jews and what future, if any, remains for them after such monumental crimes against God and violations of His covenant.
So here's my challenge: Stand firm like those early believers. Embrace the trials that come with bearing the name of Christ. And remember, as we faithfully endure, we participate in the great redemptive plan that God began in the days of the apostles and continues to this very moment.
The Kingdom is advancing. The King is reigning. And the Church is unshakable. Until next time, remember:
Jesus is King.
History belongs to Him.
Our calling is to live as if that truth changes everything.
