Jesus Returns! - Mark 13:24-27 Series

Mark 13:24 "But in those days, following that tribulation, " 'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; 25 the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.' 26 "At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.

Introduction

If Captain Kirk gave the order right now and had you teleported from where you’re sitting into the driver’s seat of a car driving on a highway, what would be the most important information you would need? You might want to know the speed limit, how much gas you have, traffic laws, maybe the weather forecast. But none of that is most important, the most important question is, “Where am I going? What’s the destination?” If you don’t know that, nothing else really matters.

There was a systematic theology that came out in 2013 by Michael Bird that has an interesting table of contents. Every other systematic theology starts out with the doctrine of God in ch.1, and the last chapter is eschatology (the end times). But Bird’s theology starts with the doctrine of God like everyone else, but then he puts eschatology in ch.2. His reasoning is, if you don’t know where it’s all going—what the final destination and purpose of everything is, then you won’t understand anything else properly. I think he’s on to something.

Sometimes we lose focus in the Christian life because we lose sight of the destination. We go to church and learn all about the traffic laws and how we should allow other drivers to merge in front of us and what to do about a spiritual flat tire and how to drive in snow. We get all that down pat, but we forget why we’re even driving.

If human history has no destination—if it’s just generations coming and going with all their ups and downs—if that’s all there is to life on earth, then human history is a tragic, sordid, mean-ingless mess. The human race has significance mainly because of where it’s going.

And if you’re intimidated by studying the end times because it’s so complicated, you’ll love to-day’s passage because Jesus is going to boil it down to the most essential core. The Olivet Discourse in Mark 13 is basically the entire book of Revelation distilled down to 33 verses. And of those 33, the first 19 are the preliminaries, and the last 10 are about our preparation and readiness. So the actual events of the end times are crammed into just 4 verses in the middle, and those are the verses we’re going to look at today. If you want to know where to begin in building the superstructure of your beliefs about the end times, these 4 verses are the foundation.

There are three parts to this paragraph: the coming of Christ in glory, the negative results (judgment of the wicked), and the positive results (salvation of the righteous). And as Mark loves to do, he puts the most important part in the middle. So he puts the judgment part first, the salvation part last, and the glorious, spectacular return of the Lord Jesus Christ featured as the centerpiece.

Christ’s Return

So let’s start with that centerpiece—v.26.

26 "At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

That language all comes out of Daniel 7.

Daniel 7:13 In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every lan-guage worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Some take this as a reference to Jesus’ ascension in Acts 1 , but that doesn’t work because he’s very clear this happens after the great tribulation.

Mark 13:24 "But in those days, following that tribulation, " 'the sun will be darkened … 26 At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”

The description in Daniel 7 is one of a final, glorious, uncontested rule of the Son of man that will begin when Jesus returns in the clouds after the great tribulation.

Men Will See

Others have said this verse was fulfilled in a metaphorical way in 70 A.D. Jesus came in the clouds—not literally, but in the form of judgment. But I don’t think that works either because the main emphasis here is on the fact that people will see Jesus.