The Whore, Jerusalem
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IF THE GLOVE DOESN'T FIT
Perhaps the most explosive and prolific trial of our lifetime was the OJ Simpson murder trial in the early 1990s. As an eleven-year-old boy at the time, I still remember watching the primetime aerial coverage of a white Bronco lazily loafing down the LA freeway with as much agility as a soppy wet sponge. After that, I recall the media frenzy as millions all over the country tuned in with popcorn and rapt attention to watch a court deliberating the case with all the panache and showmanship of a Ringling Brothers Circus. But, what stands out as the most memorable moment in the trial, at least in my memory, is when Juice's dream team head attorney quipped: "If the glove doesn't fit, then you must acquit." Ultimately, the jury did acquit as successive civil cases raged in court for the years to come.
Now, without getting into the weeds of that trial, the point was simple. If the evidence in the case cannot be reconciled to the defendant, if he cannot fit his chunky fingers into the glove, then he must be acquitted of the charges. But, if the glove used in the murder did fit the hand, then getting to a guilty verdict would have been all the more reasonable of a conclusion.
Now, compare this to another homicide, which is the murder of Biblical hermeneutics, where dispensationals make wild and outlandish claims about eschatology but never stop to see if the hand actually fits in the glove. While many will not do that work, that has been my goal thus far, to show how everything in the book of Matthew, even the parts that are normally associated with a futurist perspective, are that overweight puffy hand that will not fit the proverbial glove. These passages do not align with the futurists' schema and do not pass the sniff test to meet any reasonable burden of proof. Instead, it is the preterist view, the view that these things have already occurred in the past, that offers the most compelling explanation for what the book of Matthew is saying.
To prove this hypothesis, I have presented line after line of evidence. I began by showing how the Book of Malachi, the final book in the Old Testament Canon, looks forward to a fierce episode of judgment that would be coming at the first coming of Christ when He poured out His wrath upon the Jews. According to that Old Testament Prophet, the great and terrible day of the Lord was coming, and its fires would either purify the elect of God or scorch the rebellious Jews.
This is what John the Baptist, who was the final prophet of the Old Testament era, was thinking about and preaching about, as he expected an imminent judgment coming by Christ in that generation. Remember, it was John who warned the Jewish aristocracy to flee from the wrath that was coming, so urgently, in fact, that the "Ax was already at the root of the tree." According to John the Baptist, that generation was in dire trouble, and everyone who heard his preaching would have gotten that point loud and clear.
As we have seen, this was not just a focus of John but also of Jesus. In His miracles, teachings, parables, and confrontations with the Pharisees in Matthew 21, 22, and 23, He deliberately and very clearly called down covenant woes and curses upon that old rebellious city, promising that the wrath of God, which had been stored up since Cain killed Abel, would be poured out upon them.
Each piece of evidence we've examined so far fits perfectly into the preterist interpretation like a well-fitted glove. And with that, we are going to move further into Matthew 24 this week and examine a few new pieces of evidence that these things certainly occurred within that first-century generation. Today, we will look at how Jesus compares Jerusalem to a woman in labor and how He gives three pieces of evidence that the disciples could be on the lookout for to show that the labor pangs were increasing and that the end was drawing near. So, with that, let us read our passage today, and let us jump right into part 1.
Matthew 24:6-8, says:
You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs. - Matthew 24:6-8
Now, let us begin by looking at what Jesus means by calling Jerusalem a woman in labor.
THE WOMAN IN LABOR
When Jesus wanted to explain the coming judgment, He chose the metaphor of pregnancy, which was vivid and relatable to His first-century audience. Forgive me for being punny, but it was pregnant with lots of meaning. So, for a few moments, I want to pull back the layers a little bit and look into all of the various nuances and shades that Jesus was intending to describe by using this metaphor.
In Matthew 24:8, Jesus says:
"But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs." - Matthew 24:8
POINT 1: THE IMMINENCE OF THE JUDGMENT
By using this metaphor, Jesus was undoubtedly describing things that would soon occur. In the same way that a 40-week pregnancy doesn't last for decades, the 40-year pregnancy of Jerusalem has not been limping along for the last two millennia. Everything in Matthew 24, and everything we are going to discuss today, like the wars and rumors of wars, the earthquakes, and the famines, concern labor pains that the disciples would witness and would be evidence to them that the end has drawn near. Jesus did not believe things were going to steadily decline over thousands of years but quickly increase in intensity until the final moment of delivery when Jerusalem was destroyed. The very nature of the pregnancy metaphor ensures that Jesus was talking about things in the near term and not in the remote, unknowable future. That is the first thing this metaphor teaches us.
POINT 2: 40 WEEKS AND 40 YEARS
Alongside the urgency of pregnancy, Jesus also gave His disciples a clear timeline for when these events would unfold. Think about it this way: a typical pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, which are 40 distinct units of time. Well, in a similar way, a Biblical generation is forty years, which is also forty distinct units of time. And, when you understand that forty in the Bible usually refers to a moment of travail and suffering in judgment, such as when it rained for forty days during the flood, or when the people wandered for forty years in rebellion, then you can see that this forty-year window we are talking about is a time that will be marked with judgment and destruction. When Jesus declared in Matthew 23 that judgment would fall on "this generation," He marked out the next forty years as one of intense calamity and judgment, which is the second thing we learn.
POINT 3: WHAT DEFINES A GENERATION?
Now, perhaps you are saying, sure, that makes sense if a Biblical generation really equals forty years, but how do you know that? Generations in the modern world tend to be accounted for by twenty years, so how do we know for sure that a Biblical generation is forty years? Well, we know how long it was in the mind of a first-century Jew, because of how vividly it was set upon them as they lived and died within the wilderness. If you remember, it was God who called them a wicked and adulterous generation (Deuteronomy 1:35). And it was God who proclaimed that the entire generation would pass away in the wilderness for their rebellion (Numbers 14:33-34). Thus, this forty-year period became so deeply ingrained in the Jewish psyche that it became the very definition of what the lifespan of a generation was supposed to be moving forward.
So, when Jesus prophesied that "this generation [γενεά] will not pass away until all these things take place" (Matthew 24:34), and that all of God's wrath was going to fall on that generation (Matthew 23), He was leaning letting His Jewish disciples know that a 40-year countdown had begun just as it had for the rebellious wilderness people of Israel. That countdown would begin at His resurrection in AD 30 and would continue until the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, when the sand in Jerusalem's hourglass would finally be expired, and the new generation called the Church would follow Jesus into the land of promise.
That is the third thing we learn: when Jesus says "generation," He refers to the destruction that is coming to the people alive in His day, that will occur in forty tumultuous years, which will be like a pregnancy with hard labor.
POINT 4: GRAMMAR HAMMERS AND "THIS GENERATION"
An additional aspect of this was how the grammar also proves the interpretation we are arguing for. Consider Jesus' choice of words when He says "this" generation. He did not say "a generation" at some point in the unknowable future, "some generation" at some point, or even "that generation" way over there. By saying "this generation," He pointed directly to the people alive at His time and said this judgment is for "this generation."
Now, why is that important? Well, anyone familiar with grammar will notice that the word "this" in the phrase was far from accidental. Like English, Greek grammar designates the words "This" and "these" as near demonstrative pronouns, meaning that they refer to things close to the speaker, as opposed to words like "that" and "those," which refer to things that are farther away. For instance, if you want to talk about the things near you, you might say, "Look at this!" Whereas, when you want to talk about things further away from you, you might say: "look at that!" Both words are helpful because they tell you how near or how far the thing which you are referring to is.
Thus, when Jesus was looking at the generation standing right in front of Him, using the phrase "this generation," we can think nothing other than Jesus intended His prophetic fulfillment to occur to them. Had He wanted to prophesy about us, He would have used the far demonstrative pronoun "that", and He would have said all of these things would happen to "that generation," but that is not what He said. There's no ambiguity in the words of Christ. He limited it to their generation, which is a forty-year period of time like a pregnancy, and so should we.
POINT 5: THE PATTERN (400, REJECTION, 40, CONQUEST):
Even further than this, the use of the number forty can shed much light on what God is doing in Matthew and in the downfall of Jerusalem. For instance, in the Old Testament, we have another example of a 40-year period of judgment where an entire generation dies. But there is so much more to the story than that and so much more to the Biblical pattern and story that God is telling. Hang tight with me for a moment because we need to explain this briefly.
Picture this: before the Israelites became their own nation, they were down in Egypt and spent 400 long years under the oppressive rule of Pharaoh. That's 400 years of backbreaking work under a pagan king and, even more significant, 400 years of total silence from God—He wasn't speaking to them at all. Then, just when it seemed like God had abandoned them, He broke that silence, not by talking to the mighty men of Israel or any of a new class of patriarchs, but to women. He said to the Hebrew midwives, signaling that He hadn't forgotten His people. Right afterward, God raised up a deliverer—Moses—who would lead them out of Egypt. The tyrant Pharaoh met his end, and God brought His people safely through the Red Sea and into the wilderness.
This was their chance to follow God's way, but instead, they kept rebelling. First, they made a golden calf at Sinai, and then they complained and resisted Him at every turn. When they reached the edge of the Promised Land, they flat-out rejected God's command to go in, so He gave them a heavy punishment: they'd spend 40 years wandering aimlessly in the desert. The whole rebellious generation would die off, missing out on the Promised Land, while their children—the next generation—would go in, conquer Canaan, and finally receive the land.
This whole journey—400 years of waiting, the rebellion at a mountain, rejection of God, 40 years of wilderness punishment, and then a fresh start for a new generation—forms an important pattern that will show up again later in the Bible. In the New Testament, right at the beginning, we see it repeating, giving us a framework to understand who the people of God are, and what books like Revelation and chapters like Matthew 24 are talking about.
How? After the last book of the Old Testament (Malachi), God's people went through another 400 years of silence. Like before, there was no word from God, and they were under the rule of pagan kings. This time, it wasn't Egypt but the powerful empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and finally Rome. At the end of that silence, a king was installed by Rome: Herod, who in many ways was like Pharaoh, even ordering the massacre of Jewish baby boys.
Then, God breaks His silence again, not by speaking to the mighty men of Israel, but by speaking to 2 Hebrew women (Mary and Elizabeth) just like He'd done with the two Hebrew midwives named in the book of Exodus. He announces the birth of a new deliverer, Jesus, who would free His people, but not from Egypt—this time, it would be from sin. Soon after, Herod dies, and Jesus, like Moses, leads His people, though many again resist Him.
So, the New Testament begins just like the Old Testament story did: with 400 years of waiting, the birth of a deliverer, and a clear call to follow God. This repeated pattern of silence, deliverance, and rebellion reveals something powerful about God's work in history and gives us a lens for understanding His overarching story.
But there's an even deeper layer to this story. Just like Israel was punished with 40 years of wandering for rejecting God's rule at the mountain, Jesus announced another 40-year period of punishment for those who rejected Him at Calvary. This time, it wasn't a punishment and ban unto the wilderness, but it was still a wilderness of sorts—a period of intense and increasing judgment on those who clung to the old ways and rejected the Messiah. This new '40-year wilderness' began when Jesus prophesied it in Matthew 24, around AD 30, and came to a shattering conclusion in AD 70 when Jerusalem fell. Judgment came upon those who refused to listen, turning Jerusalem into a wilderness of rubble and ash where all signs of life were uprooted and destroyed.
But that's not the end. In fact, just like in the Old Testament, when one generation passed and a new one arose to take possession of the land, the New Testament shows a similar shift. After judgment fell on Jerusalem, a new people—those who believed in Christ—were raised up to inherit something even more remarkable. This time, it wasn't just one land; the promise now expanded to the entire world. The Church became the new people of God, charged with taking the gospel to every corner of the globe, establishing a spiritual 'promised land' wherever Christ was preached and obeyed.
So, what we're seeing here is a pattern. God's way of working hasn't changed, but the scope has expanded. In both the Old and New Testaments, we see a cycle of silence, deliverance, rejection, judgment, and renewal. And where Israel's mission was once contained to the land of Canaan, the Church's mission now spans the earth, a new conquest of the kingdom of God, not by sword but by spirit and truth.
Only when we see this pattern do we understand why Postmillennialism and partial preterism fit so naturally with the unfolding story of the Bible. These views highlight this beautiful symmetry between the Old and New Testaments, showing us how God's promises, judgment, and faithfulness build upon each other. This interpretation reveals a consistent message: God's judgment on those who reject Him and His faithfulness to build up a new, victorious people who will inherit the world.
From a time of silence, through the desert of judgment, and into the inheritance of the world, God's plan has remained steady and sure, culminating in a new covenant people who have been given the ultimate mission. Just as Jesus told His followers in Matthew 24, this would all come upon 'this generation,' and it did—leading to a new chapter where the Church would emerge as the new Israel, commissioned to take over a global promised land. That is the fifth thing we learn, that 40 is used by God in a pattern of judgment and resurrection to bring about a people that He will call unto Himself.
POINT 6: JERUSALEM'S PREGNANCY AND HER PASSING AWAY
This is where the analogy of pregnancy becomes so powerful because it represents that same 40-year period of punishment that the Old Testament Israelites endured. This means that Jerusalem is the woman who became unexpectedly pregnant with the wrath of God and now only would her trevails increase, but they would lead to her certain covenantal death. Think about it, long before a woman tragically loses her life in a complicated pregnancy, there are early signs that she is pregnant that she may not even fully discern. For instance, in the early days of pregnancy, the signs are truly subtle. Before the baby bump, morning sickness, or bloating, there are a few weeks where nothing noticeable has happened. It is in this season when many women are still unsure about whether they are pregnant, and this is especially true if they are prone to having an irregular period. But, just because the signs begin slowly does not mean they can be ignored forever.
Now, think about Jerusalem, who, like that woman in her early stages, could not discern the pain that would soon overtake them. And, like many women, she did not comprehend the smaller signs with very much clarity. When false messiahs, whispers of unrest, and scattered rumors of upheaval were happening in the far corners of the Roman world, the Jews were not connecting the dots and limped on, ignorant of what was coming.
But, as any mother knows, those early symptoms eventually fade into undeniable evidence when the belly grows, the pants don't fit, and the pains of labor inevitably come. As the months pass, contractions will begin, and then they will grow sharper and more relentless, to the point that no one can deny what is happening. In much the same way for Jerusalem, the signs would intensify with things like wars, earthquakes, and famine. Still, unlike any sane woman with good sense, Jerusalem persisted in her ignorance, denying this was happening while she slipped into a kind of madness. Like a clinically insane woman, trying to pass off her 9-month belly and full of contractions as the common cold, Jerusalem denied the obvious at every point and turn.
And, what is more, just as it was coming for a woman in Jesus' time to tragically pass away after giving birth, Jerusalem's role was to be the womb through which the Church would safely enter the world before she would pass away in her delivery. Her purpose was to bring this newborn people of God into the world through the birth and union with this Jewish man Jesus and then to pass away into obscurity, with her mission being complete. By the time the final book of the Bible was written in the late 60s, the Church had received everything it needed to survive without the umbilical cord of Judaism. She was now viable; Jerusalem had fulfilled her role, and because of that, the city, the temple, the priesthood, the feasts, and all of it faded away, while the newly "born" Church remained, which was now in the care of the Holy Spirit, who would grow her from an infant, into the radiant bride of Christ. That is the sixth thing we learn: Jerusalem was the woman who would die while giving birth to the Church.
POINT 7: FROM INFANT TO FULL-GROWN BRIDE
This also isn't the first time God used a metaphor of a pregnancy and birthing to talk about His selection of a people for Himself. It is here that we will see that the Church takes much the same pathway to being the bride of Christ as her mother, Israel took in her marriage to Yahweh. Except, with the Church, there would be no more infidelity and whoring.
For instance, we see this same pattern in His relationship with Israel, as He describes in Ezekiel 16:4-8. In this passage, God finds Israel like a helpless newborn whose mother is no longer in the picture, abandoned and left vulnerable to die. He says of her:
As for your birth, on the day you were born, your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing; you were not rubbed with salt or even wrapped in cloths. No eye looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born. "When I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, 'Live!' Yes, I said to you while you were in your blood, 'Live!' I made you numerous like plants of the field. Then you grew up, became tall and reached the age for fine ornaments; your breasts were formed and your pubic hair had grown. Yet you were naked and bare. "Then I passed by you and saw you, and behold, you were at the time for love; so I spread My skirt over you and covered your nakedness. I also swore to you and entered into a covenant with you so that you became Mine," declares the Lord God. - Ezekiel 16:4-8
God uses this analogy in Ezekiel 16 to describe how He nurtured Israel from infancy in Egypt, cleaned her up, and watched her grow from a baby into a beautiful young adult who was ready for marriage. Just as a young girl matures into a woman, reaching the age of sexual maturity so that she may enter into the covenant of marriage, so did God preside over the infant Israel, nurturing her into maturity so He could enter into a covenant union with her. When the time was right, God established the marriage covenant at Mount Sinai, becoming her true husband (Jeremiah 31:32) and making Israel His beloved bride (Isaiah 54:5).
Yet, tragically, Israel became unfaithful to her covenant, turning to idols and playing the harlot with all the nations. The prophets did not shy away from depicting Israel's betrayal in the rawest terms. In Ezekiel 16:15-17, the imagery is explicit:
"But you trusted in your beauty and played the harlot because of your fame, and you poured out your harlotries on every passer-by who might be willing... You took your beautiful jewels made of My gold and of My silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself male images that you might play the harlot with them." - Ezekiel 16:15-17
Here, the prophet paints a picture of Israel as one who took the blessings given by God and defiled them, prostituting herself with idols and foreign gods.
The betrayal deepens when we consider Jeremiah 3:1-3, which declares:
"But you are a harlot with many lovers; Yet you turn to Me," declares the Lord. "Lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see. Where have you not been violated?" - Jeremiah 3:1-3
This is not just a lapse or a momentary failure; it is a persistent, unashamed pursuit of infidelity. God's chosen people, once betrothed to Him in faithfulness, shamelessly sought out every high place and grove to engage in spiritual adultery.
Hosea's account underscores the severity of this betrayal. In Hosea 2:2-5, we read:
"For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.'" - Hosea 2:2-5
Israel's unfaithfulness wasn't passive; it was an active, willful pursuit of false gods and alliances that promised prosperity and protection but ultimately led to her ruin.
The harlotry of Israel is laid bare in Ezekiel 23:2-4, where Samaria and Jerusalem are depicted as sisters who prostituted themselves in Egypt:
"They played the harlot in their youth; there their breasts were pressed and there their virgin bosom was handled." - Ezekiel 23:2-4
This vivid portrayal underscores the long history of infidelity that stained Israel from her inception, continuing through generations despite repeated calls to repentance.
Because of this, God's patience wore thin. Just as He had issued a certificate of divorce to the northern tribes of Israel for their relentless whoring after foreign gods (Jeremiah 3:8), so too was Judah now facing the same fate. The Lord's righteous anger was not without justification. Isaiah 1:21 cries out:
"How the faithful city has become a harlot, She who was full of justice! Righteousness once lodged in her, But now murderers." - Isaiah 1:21
The city once known for upholding God's law had become synonymous with corruption and betrayal.
This level of covenant-breaking necessitated God's decisive action—issuing the decree of divorce to Judah and choosing for Himself a new bride. And as we will see, the final act of faithfulness from the harlot Judah was to give birth to the Church. After the labor pains that Jesus prophesied, Judah passed away, having birthed a new and faithful bride whom Christ would make His royal queen.
POINT 8: THE WHORE OF BABYLON AND THE PREGNANT WOMAN
In Matthew 24, when Jesus speaks of a woman in labor, it's not the image of a noble mother awaiting her child with hope; it's something far more grim. This woman, in Jesus' prophetic mind, is not the image of purity and expectation but of betrayal and unfaithfulness—a whore who has conceived through her infidelity and is on the cusp of facing the consequences. The connection between this prophetic imagery and the whore of Babylon in Revelation is undeniable once you see the pieces come together.
Matthew 24 is drenched in judgment language, where Jesus outlines the signs that will precede the destruction of Jerusalem. He speaks of wars, famines, earthquakes, and, tellingly, the pains of labor: "All these are merely the beginning of birth pangs" (Matthew 24:8). But this isn't the labor of a virtuous mother; this is the anguished birth of judgment itself. The labor pangs are not heralding a joyous birth but the coming wrath and upheaval that Jerusalem has brought upon herself through centuries of covenant betrayal.
Now fast-forward to Revelation, where John takes up the imagery and turns it into a blistering vision of judgment. The whore of Babylon, seated in scarlet and drenched in jewels, is the woman whose labor has reached its climax. Dressed in purple and gold, reminiscent of the high priestly garments of Israel, she embodies Jerusalem—once holy, now apostate. This woman isn't bearing the fruits of righteousness but is depicted as "drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses of Jesus" (Revelation 17:6). Her adornment and excess expose her hypocrisy, showcasing a city that had the outward trappings of holiness while having become spiritually corrupt, a harlot in God's eyes.
Why is she called Babylon? By the time of John's vision, Babylon, the ancient empire, was long gone—reduced to ruins and historical footnotes. Yet, "Babylon" is used as a type, an echo of spiritual degeneracy, defiance, and godless power. Just as ancient Babylon defied God, Jerusalem had spiritually taken on Babylon's mantle at the height of her apostasy. This isn't merely about idolatry; it's about the wholesale rejection of God and His covenant, about Jerusalem absorbing the world's wickedness like a sponge until she no longer resembled God's bride but Babylon's whore.
Consider that Israel once endured exile in Babylon. It's a tragic symmetry that the city that once wept by the rivers of Babylon had, by the time of Jesus and John, become a new Babylon herself—entrenched in compromise, blinded by power, and stained with the blood of prophets. The fact that the woman in Revelation is dressed like the high priest—decked in sacred colors and jewels—cements the identity: this is Jerusalem, the city that was supposed to bear God's light but instead played the harlot and spilled the blood of the faithful.
Jesus, in Matthew 24, is warning of her impending judgment. The labor pains aren't just the signs of a coming event; they're the contractions of a judgment-birth. Jerusalem, the harlot dressed as a queen, is about to face her downfall. Her sins have reached their peak, her iniquity overflowing. She is Babylon reborn, a city ripe for judgment, set to be divorced by God. And just as Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation" (Matthew 23:36), that generation witnessed the culmination of this prophecy in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
In that moment, the labor ended not with the birth of life but with the shattering wail of judgment.
POINT 9: THE DIVORCE OF ISRAEL AND MARRIAGE OF THE QUEEN
As we have seen, the analogy of labor and birth involves more than what can be gleaned from a cursory reading. The final thing I would like to point out is what it means about fidelity, adultery, and the divorce of Israel. Beneath the surface of this text and this metaphor looms the coming reality that God is going to put away the whore called Judah for her infidelities. If you will remember, in the Old Testament, God had already issued a certificate of divorce to the ten northern tribes (Israel) for their repeated rebellion and whoring after foreign gods (Jeremiah 3:8). In that case, He completely obliterated those ten tribes, ethnically eliminating them from the face of the earth, and allowing them to intermarry with all the nations. Now, the time had come for Israel's younger sister Judah, who had played the whore more ardently and disgustingly than even Israel and was now about to be cast out of her master's home.
Just as an adulterous wife in the law of Moses, who was found to be pregnant with another man's baby, would undergo the penalty of death for her crimes, Jerusalem was about to meet the full consequences of her covenantal infidelity in AD 70. Jesus' prophecy in Matthew 24 was not merely about her physical destruction; it was about the final severance of God from her, the issuance of a final divorce certificate, and removing the old covenant bride because she had forsaken her covenant. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was the culmination of this "putting away," echoing the same punishment prescribed for an unfaithful bride in the book of Leviticus.
Yet, in the very pains of Jerusalem's judgment, something new and unexpected was born. Though Jerusalem had been the harlot, pregnant with a child, not her own, God, in His mercy, transformed her labor into the birth of a new covenant people. In His grace, He did not destroy Jerusalem until His infant daughter, the Church, was viable and able to live on her own. Then, after the moment of her viability, Jerusalem's trials intensified—wars, famines, false messiahs—all pressing down upon her until the Church was fully delivered into the world, and the whore was dead. But, unlike Israel in Ezekiel 16, the Church would not grow up to become a whore. She would grow and mature until she became a faithful bride, ready to enter her Bridegroom's eternal love forever.
By invoking this metaphor of pregnancy, Jesus conveyed a message of imminent judgment on the adultress called Judah and new life for the baby Church, who for 2000 years has been growing up into the woman whom Jesus will return to enter into eternal union with when all her preparations are finished.
CONCLUSION
Today, we've pulled back the veil on a story that transcends the dusty pages of history and reaches right into the heartbeat of who we are and what we're called to be. This isn't just a tale of ancient judgment or symbolic language meant to intrigue—it's the story of us, the Church, the people who were born in fire and trial, forged from the ashes of a rebellious Jerusalem, called to be a new bride for an everlasting King.
When Jesus spoke of labor pains in Matthew 24, He wasn't picturing a noble mother bracing for joy but a city that had turned from its covenant and was facing its reckoning. This was a city dressed in all the outward glory of a high priest, adorned in purple and gold but inwardly corrupted—an opulent whore. Revelation paints this woman in stark detail: drunk on the blood of the prophets, shameless, decked in jewels that mocked the sacred vestments she wore. Babylon, that age-old symbol of defiance and degeneracy, had found its new home not in a distant land but in the heart of Jerusalem itself.
The tragedy is immense. This city, which once represented God's covenant love, had become so far gone that she mirrored the very spirit of Babylon. The people who had sung psalms by the rivers of Babylon during their exile had now embraced the role of Babylon themselves, absorbing its godless ambition and spiritual depravity. But in that anguish, God was orchestrating something profound. Like a woman giving birth, Jerusalem's agony signaled the end of one era and the miraculous beginning of another.
Out of the labor pangs came the Church—the infant daughter of a fallen city, born not to perpetuate her mother's infidelity but to grow into a bride worthy of the King. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was not just the end of an era; it was the severing of the old covenant, the final 'divorce' of a harlot bride. And yet, in that moment of devastation, the Church stood, cradled in the hands of the Holy Spirit, ready to grow and become the radiant bride Christ would one day return for.
So, where does this leave us? We are that infant, now grown into a global body, entrusted with a mission as vast as it is sacred. We are called not just to exist but to thrive, to prepare, to shine brighter, and to grow stronger until the day our Bridegroom comes. This is a call to holiness—not the kind that remains locked in churches but the kind that transforms hearts, families, communities, and nations. It's a call to take dominion, not by force but by faith, by spreading the truth of Christ in every arena of life until the whole world resounds with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.
So, I charge you today: let hope ignite your soul. Let courage course through your veins. Let effort be the anthem of your life as we strive to build the Kingdom of Christ here and now. We are part of a grand, divine narrative, and our Bridegroom is coming. It's up to us to make ready—to be a bride adorned not just in ceremony but in faith, love, and truth. The labor has ended; now, the mission begins. Let's build, conquer, and prepare, for the day is coming when the King will return, and we will enter into His joy forever.
