CHAPTER 13
The Final Crisis Before the Appearing of Christ
The Covenant Crisis in Israel and the Climax of the Present Evil Age
Introduction
The True Shape of the End of This Age
When the Scriptures are read in their given order—Torah, Prophets, the teaching of the Lord Jesus, and the Apostolic writings—a coherent, steady pattern emerges concerning the end of “this present evil age” (Galatians 1:4). That pattern is very different from the dramatic, globalized, apocalyptic scenarios that have developed when the Book of Revelation is treated as the controlling blueprint for Christian eschatology. Once Revelation is set in its proper place, as a disputed and heavily symbolic early Christian writing that cannot be allowed to overturn the clear teaching of the rest of Scripture, the larger witness of the canon comes into focus.
The unified pattern that emerges from Moses, the Prophets, the Lord Jesus, and the Apostles can be summarized in this way. The end of this age is not defined by worldwide destruction, a distinct worldwide “tribulation period” uniquely targeting the Church, or the collapse of ordinary societal life. Instead, it is marked by an atmosphere of deceptive normalcy in which buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage, planting and building continue, even while lawlessness steadily increases and dulls moral perception. At the heart of this closing season stands a focused covenant crisis in Israel, centered not in the nations at large but in Judea—a crisis involving a sanctuary, a blasphemous ruler, and a sacrilegious act that defiles the holy place, bringing Israel’s long accountability under the Torah to its climax. Within this environment the Church, scattered among the nations, does not pass through a unique, globally orchestrated tribulation aimed specifically at Christians. Rather, it experiences deception, negligence, and widespread apostasy, as many professing believers are swept along by the spirit of the age instead of watching and preparing for the appearing of the Son of Man.
The Lord’s own comparisons underline this atmosphere of deceptive normalcy. He says that His day will be “as in the days of Noah” and “as in the days of Lot.” In Noah’s generation people ate and drank, married and were given in marriage; in Lot’s generation they ate and drank, bought and sold, planted and built. Life went on in its ordinary patterns until the very day judgment fell. The problem was not that visible catastrophe had already arrived, but that spiritual perception had been lost. The same pattern will mark the end of this age. The world will appear stable and functional; religious institutions will operate; people will plan for the future; many will say “peace and safety” and assume that present conditions will continue indefinitely. Yet this apparent normalcy will mask a deepening lawlessness and an approaching judgment.
In this way Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, the Lord Jesus, Paul, and Peter together affirm a single, integrated pattern. Their testimony reveals that the “great tribulation” is Israel’s covenant judgment, not the Church’s final persecution, and that the age does not wind down through a long series of symbolic stages but comes to its close in the sudden and radiant appearing of the Lord Jesus.
Daniel’s Prophetic Foundation: The Mediterranean Kingdoms and Israel’s Final Distress
The Great Sea and the Scope of Daniel’s Visions
The prophetic foundation for the end of the age is laid in the book of Daniel. From the beginning, the angel fixes the scope: the visions concern “your people” and “your holy city” (Daniel 9:24). Daniel is not being given a history of global geopolitics; he is being shown the succession of powers that dominate Israel’s world and the way in which those powers bear on the sanctuary and the covenant people.
Daniel 7 opens with a clear geographic marker: four winds stir up “the Great Sea,” and four beasts rise out of it (Daniel 7:2–3). Throughout the Torah and the Prophets, the “Great Sea” is the Mediterranean—the western boundary of Israel’s land, the sea that defines the horizon of Israel’s world (Numbers 34:6–7; Joshua 1:4; Ezekiel 47:10, 15, 20). Daniel’s beasts therefore arise from the Mediterranean world. They are the successive empires that rule the Near Eastern and Mediterranean region that directly affects Israel’s life under the covenant. When the text later speaks of these kingdoms ruling “over all the earth” (Daniel 2:39), this universal language must be read in its ancient Near Eastern frame—just as Luke’s “all the world” at the census of Augustus refers to the Roman oikoumenē, the inhabited imperial world, rather than the entire globe. Scripture often speaks of the “world” in terms of the inhabited sphere known to the biblical writers, the lands that surround Israel and bear on its covenant story.
Within this Mediterranean frame, Daniel sees the same four empires twice. In chapter 2 they appear as the four metals of the statue revealed in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream; in chapter 7 they appear as four beasts rising from the Great Sea. In both visions, the fourth kingdom is the focus of the end.
The Four Kingdoms in Succession
Daniel first interprets Nebuchadnezzar’s statue. The head of gold is the king of Babylon, to whom the God of heaven has given a kingdom, power, strength, and glory, and into whose hand He has delivered wherever the children of men dwell within the sphere of that empire (Daniel 2:37–38). This is dominion in the Near Eastern and Mediterranean world: Mesopotamia, the Levant, and the territories surrounding Israel. The chest and arms of silver represent the Medo-Persian empire that succeeds Babylon and spreads from Persia through Mesopotamia, across Asia Minor and the Levant, and down into Egypt. The belly and thighs of bronze represent the Greek dominion under Alexander and his successors, whose rule and culture permeate the Mediterranean basin and the Near East. Scripture can say that each of these kingdoms rules “over all the earth” because each, in its time, dominates the whole of that known world around the Great Sea.
The fourth kingdom appears as legs of iron with feet and toes partly of iron and partly of clay. It is described as “strong as iron,” breaking in pieces and shattering everything, and crushing “all the others” (Daniel 2:40). In context, “all the others” are the previous empires within the same region. This fourth kingdom does not merely succeed the third; it overwhelms, absorbs, and tramples the remnants of Babylon, Persia, and Greece, integrating their lands and peoples into a single, unified Mediterranean empire.
From the vantage point of the New Covenant, this fourth kingdom is most naturally identified with Rome and its long legacy. Rome swallowed the Hellenistic kingdoms, encircled the entire Mediterranean, extended its rule deep into Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, took Judea under its authority, and eventually destroyed the Second Temple and scattered the Jewish people. Under Roman rule the Lord Jesus was condemned and crucified; at the height of Roman imperial unity He rose from the dead, ascended to the right hand of the Father, and received the kingdom as the Son of Man (Daniel 7:13–14; Acts 2:32–36).
The Fourth Kingdom’s Difference and Persistence
In Daniel 7 the fourth kingdom appears again, now as a beast “dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong,” with iron teeth devouring, crushing, and trampling what remains (Daniel 7:7, 19, 23). It is said to be “different” from all the beasts that preceded it. That difference includes its sheer strength, but also its capacity to integrate and endure. Rome did not simply demand tribute; it built roads, imposed law, organized administration, and established a civilizational pattern that continued long after the unified empire fractured. The imprint of Roman law, governance, and culture persisted in the Byzantine East, in the Latin West, and in the later Western nations that inherited its forms.
If Daniel, a sixth-century BC exile, was shown not only ancient Rome but the far downstream effects of this fourth kingdom—the forms of power, communication, surveillance, and warfare that would one day develop out of that legacy—it is not hard to see why the beast appeared to him “dreadful and terrible.” The text leaves room for a final configuration of this kingdom that would seem utterly alien to his world, yet still recognizably the heir of Rome.
At the same time, Daniel sees that this fourth kingdom does not remain a single, unified empire all the way to the end. In the statue, the iron legs eventually give way to feet and toes in which iron and clay are mixed. The angel explains that “the kingdom shall be divided,” partly strong and partly brittle, in a form where the parts do not cleave to one another (Daniel 2:41–43). In the beast vision, this divided remnant appears as ten horns upon the head of the fourth beast. The angel interprets: “The ten horns are ten kings who shall arise from this kingdom” (Daniel 7:24). These ten horns are not a fifth, separate empire; they are the final arrangement that arises out of the fourth kingdom itself. These ten kings are the rulers of the nations that surround Israel—the Near Eastern and Mediterranean lands that Rome once governed as provinces and that now form the ring of nations encircling the covenant people and the holy city.
The Fourth Kingdom’s Eastern Legacy and the Nations Surrounding Israel
A question naturally arises at this point: if the fourth kingdom is Rome, and Rome fell centuries ago, how can ten kings arise “from this kingdom” at the end of the age? The answer lies in a historical reality that Western Christianity has largely overlooked. Rome did not fall everywhere at once. The Western empire fractured in the fifth century, but the Eastern empire—centered in Constantinople, governing the Levant, Egypt, Asia Minor, North Africa, and the lands directly surrounding Israel—continued as the Roman Empire without interruption for another thousand years. The people living under Byzantine rule called themselves Romans. Their emperor held the title of Caesar. Their legal codes were Roman. Their provincial administration governed the very lands where Daniel’s visions were set—Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the coastal cities of the Mediterranean, and Judea itself.
When the Islamic conquests swept through the seventh century, they did not erase the Roman imprint on these territories. The caliphates inherited and adapted Roman administrative structures, Roman roads, Roman cities, and Roman provincial boundaries. The Ottoman Empire, which succeeded the caliphates and ruled the Near East for four centuries, consciously claimed the mantle of Rome. When Sultan Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453, he took the title Kayser-i Rum—Caesar of Rome. The Ottoman state governed the lands surrounding Israel as the self-declared continuation of the Roman imperial order.
The modern nations of the Near East carry this legacy forward in a form that Daniel’s vision describes with remarkable precision. The borders of virtually every nation now surrounding Israel—Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and the boundaries of the British Mandate over Palestine—were drawn after the First World War by Britain and France, the Western heirs of the fourth kingdom. The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 and the League of Nations mandates that followed imposed European political structures on lands that Rome had once governed directly. These nations did not arise organically from ancient tribal or ethnic boundaries. They were created by the Western remnant of the fourth kingdom, carving Roman provincial territory into modern states. Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and the other North African nations surrounding the Mediterranean were likewise shaped by European colonial administration operating within the sphere Rome had established two millennia earlier.
The result is precisely what Daniel saw: a divided order of kings arising from the fourth kingdom, still bearing the iron of Roman-derived statehood, legal structures, and administrative patterns, yet mixed with the clay of tribal, sectarian, and religious division that prevents genuine unity. The parts do not cleave to one another (Daniel 2:43). The modern Near East—fractured along Sunni and Shia lines, divided by competing tribal loyalties, held together by borders imposed from outside rather than grown from within—fits this description with a specificity that no Western European reading of the ten kings has ever achieved. The ten kings are not a revived European union. They are the rulers of the nations surrounding Israel, arising from the eastern provinces of the fourth kingdom, bearing the iron of Rome in their political structures and the clay of internal division in their inability to cohere.
Israel itself stands outside the ten. Daniel’s visions place Israel as the object of the ten kings’ pressure, not as one of the ten. The sanctuary is in Israel; the covenant crisis centers on Israel; the little horn directs his campaign against Israel’s worship, calendar, and holy place. But Israel is not a horn on the beast. Israel is the covenant nation around which the beast’s final configuration arranges itself.
The Little Horn: Israel’s False Messiah
It is among these ten that Daniel sees another horn arise—”a little one”—which comes up among them and uproots three of the first horns (Daniel 7:8). At first it appears small and insignificant, yet it displaces other rulers and becomes greater than its companions. It has eyes like the eyes of a man, signaling intelligence and perception, and a mouth speaking “great things”—pompous, blasphemous words against the Most High (Daniel 7:8, 20, 25). The angel explains that this horn is “another” king who arises after the ten, “different from the first ones,” who subdues three kings (Daniel 7:24).
The word “different” deserves careful attention. It is the same word used to describe the fourth beast as “different” from the three beasts before it (Daniel 7:7, 23)—a word that signals not merely greater power but a qualitative distinction, a ruler who is not the same kind as the others. The ten are Gentile rulers of the nations surrounding Israel. The little horn arises among them—in their geopolitical environment—but he is different from them. His campaign is not directed at rival Gentile powers for territorial advantage. Every element of his activity targets Israel’s covenant life: he speaks against the Most High, wears out the saints of the Most High, and intends to change “times and law” (Daniel 7:25). In Daniel’s context, “times and law” are not generic social customs; they refer to the covenant calendar and ordinances given to Israel—the appointed feasts, sacrifices, and statutes of the Torah that order Israel’s worship. He magnifies himself against the Prince of the host, takes away the daily sacrifice, casts down the sanctuary, and throws truth to the ground (Daniel 8:11–12). A covenant is confirmed with many for one “week,” and in the middle of that week sacrifice and offering cease and the abomination that makes desolate is set up (Daniel 9:27). He profanes the sanctuary fortress, abolishes the daily sacrifice, and sets up the abomination of desolation (Daniel 11:31).
The Lord Jesus confirmed and sharpened this picture when He warned the leaders of Israel: “I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive” (John 5:43). This is not a general warning about false teachers. The Lord is speaking specifically about Israel’s reception of a rival claimant—someone who comes in his own name rather than in the Father’s name, and whom Israel will receive where they rejected the true Messiah. The structure is precise: one rejected, another received. The “another” occupies the same category as the Lord Jesus in Israel’s eyes—a messianic figure—but operates from a completely different source.
His subduing of three of the ten kings further confirms this reading. If the little horn is not a Gentile ruler competing for dominance within the coalition but a figure arising from Israel who defeats surrounding enemies, his military victories over three of the kings encircling Israel would be precisely the kind of act that would cement his messianic credentials in the eyes of the nation. Israel would see a leader who arises from Zion, subdues their enemies, and restores their sovereignty. The nation would rally behind him. He would confirm a covenant with many. The sanctuary would be restored, sacrifices renewed, and Israel’s covenant life reorganized under his authority. And then, in the middle of the week, his true nature is unveiled, and the crisis Daniel foresaw reaches its devastating climax.
Every structural element of Daniel’s visions binds this crisis to Israel, Jerusalem, and the sanctuary. The fourth kingdom arises from the Great Sea and dominates the Mediterranean world. Its ten-king remnant provides the final Gentile backdrop. The little horn emerges among those kings, yet directs his campaign specifically against Israel’s covenant life: against the sanctuary, the sacrifices, the appointed times, and the people called “holy” under the Torah. The time of unparalleled distress that follows is explicitly “for your people” and “your holy city” (Daniel 12:1; 9:24). In Daniel’s horizon, the “saints of the Most High” are Israel in their covenant calling, and the “time of trouble such as never was” is the climactic discipline of that nation under the Law.
At the same time, Daniel also sees that not all within this covenant community share the same outcome. Many within Israel fall; a purified remnant is delivered, written in the book; and at the end “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,” some to life in the Age to Come, others to shame and contempt in that same age (Daniel 12:1–2). Later revelation makes clear that those who finally receive the kingdom with the Son of Man are the faithful—from Israel and from the nations—who are counted worthy of the Age to Come and the resurrection of life (Luke 20:35). Daniel’s “saints” who inherit the kingdom (Daniel 7:18, 22, 27) are thus, in New Covenant terms, those believers who are united to the Lord Jesus and glorified at His appearing.
The Lord Jesus Confirms Daniel and Locates the Crisis in Judea
When the Lord Jesus teaches about the end of the age, He does not introduce a new scheme. He explicitly affirms Daniel and locates the decisive crisis in the land of Israel.
“When you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place,” He says, “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Matthew 24:15–16). His language is deliberate. He speaks of “the holy place” using the ordinary term for a consecrated physical location. He describes the abomination as “standing,” using a verb form that suggests a fixed, installed presence, not a passing metaphor. And He directs His warning to a specific population in a specific region: “those who are in Judea.”
The danger He describes is not everywhere in the world at once, but concentrated in the land around the sanctuary. Those on the housetop in that region are not to go down to gather possessions; those in the field are not to return home for a cloak. Pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days are to be pitied. The instructions are the language of immediate, physical flight from a localized danger. The Lord Jesus does not issue a call for global evacuation, nor does He frame this tribulation as a worldwide assault on Christians. He speaks as Israel’s Messiah about a covenant crisis in Israel’s land.
The larger discourse underscores the atmosphere in which this crisis unfolds. The Lord compares the days before the revealing of the Son of Man to the days of Noah and the days of Lot (Matthew 24:37–39; Luke 17:26–30). In both cases He emphasizes not visible chaos but ordinary life. People are eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, buying and selling, planting and building. Society continues its ordinary rhythms. Life appears “business as usual.” Yet in Noah’s time the earth was already filled with violence and the imaginings of the heart were continually evil; in Lot’s time the outcry of Sodom’s wickedness had reached heaven. The evil was real; the judgment was near; but the visible texture of daily life remained largely unchanged until the day the ark’s door closed and the day Lot left the city.
So it will be at the end of this age. Ordinary activities will continue; the world will feel stable; the sense of crisis will not be universal. People will say “peace and safety” even as sudden destruction stands at the door (1 Thessalonians 5:3). In Judea, a sanctuary will be restored, sacrifices renewed, and feasts observed. Many will assume that the visible re-establishment of temple service signals covenant blessing. Yet all of this will be taking place without repentance toward the true Messiah and outside the New Covenant in His blood. Into that setting, the abomination of desolation will be set up in the holy place, and the covenant crisis Daniel foresaw will reach its peak.
Quoting Daniel 12:1, the Lord declares: “Then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21). By echoing Daniel’s wording, He ties His “great tribulation” directly to Daniel’s “time of trouble” for “your people” and “your holy city.” Jeremiah had already spoken of this as “the time of Jacob’s trouble,” yet promised that “he shall be saved out of it” (Jeremiah 30:7). Zechariah likewise saw a refining fire coming upon the land in which two thirds would be cut off and perish while a third is brought through, refined as silver and tested as gold, calling on the name of the Lord and being owned by Him as His people (Zechariah 13:8–9). The Lord Jesus speaks in this same prophetic voice. The great tribulation He warns of belongs first and foremost to Jacob, to Israel under the Law, in the land of Judea.
The Church is not a Sinai nation. It does not possess a physical holy place on earth. It is never told to flee from Judea. Its calling is heavenly, its sanctuary is above, and its members are scattered among the nations. The “great tribulation” that the Lord and Daniel describe is therefore not the climactic suffering of the Church but the final covenant judgment of Israel under the Torah, out of which a purified remnant will be saved and the stage set for the appearing of the Son of Man.
Paul’s Apostolic Expansion: The Man of Sin and the Defiled Sanctuary
Paul takes up this prophetic pattern and unfolds it further for a New Covenant audience. Writing to the Thessalonians about the appearing of the Lord and “our gathering together to Him,” he warns that this Day will not come “unless the falling away comes first and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). He describes this figure as one who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, and who sits in the temple of God, displaying himself as God (2 Thessalonians 2:4).
The word Paul uses for “temple” is naos, the term for the inner sanctuary—the holy place and the most holy place—rather than the larger precincts. Elsewhere he uses this same word to describe believers and the Church as God’s dwelling in the Spirit, revealing the high calling of the faithful to become an inner-sanctuary people in union with Christ (1 Corinthians 3:16–17; Ephesians 2:21–22). In those passages, naos is figurative, showing the Church’s destiny as the true house of God.
Here, however, the surrounding prophetic pattern draws the reference back to a literal sanctuary in Judea. Paul writes in continuity with Daniel’s visions of a holy place where daily sacrifices are taken away and abominations are set up, and with the Lord’s warning about “the holy place” in which the abomination stands (Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11; Matthew 24:15–16). In this context, naos refers to a restored inner sanctuary in Jerusalem. Paul is not saying that the man of sin will sit mystically in the midst of the global Church; he is saying that this ruler will occupy the physical inner sanctuary, taking the seat that belongs to the God of Israel alone.
Paul’s description deliberately gathers Daniel’s images into a single apostolic portrait. The “little horn” who speaks great words against the Most High, wears out the saints, changes times and law, removes the daily sacrifices, and sets up the abomination of desolation (Daniel 7:8, 20–25; 8:11–13; 9:27; 11:31; 12:11) is the same person Paul calls “the man of sin” and “the son of perdition.” His lawlessness is not merely general immorality; it is covenantal—it consists in overturning, from within, the Law of God entrusted to Israel. He takes the very institutions of the Torah and rewrites them around himself.
Paul shows that the “other” whom the Lord Jesus warned Israel would receive (John 5:43) is this man of sin. He arises within the geopolitical environment of the ten-king Mediterranean order, yet he presents himself as an insider to Israel’s covenant life—a leader welcomed by many in Israel, received as a protector or even as a messianic figure, who then uses that position to expropriate the sanctuary and enthrone himself in the holy place. His seating himself in the naos is not the act of a foreign invader who storms the temple by force. It is the act of one who was granted access because Israel believed he belonged there. Only when he seats himself as God is the true nature of his claim revealed, and at that moment the abomination of desolation is set up and the great tribulation begins.
Scripture does not specify whether this ruler is ethnically Jewish or a Gentile who has entered Judaism. Daniel presents him as arising among the kings of the fourth kingdom’s remnant; Paul places him in the Jewish sanctuary; the Lord’s warning suggests that many in Israel will receive him in place of the true Messiah. The safest description is that he is a covenant insider—a man recognized within the religious world of Israel who uses his standing to desecrate the holy place and overturn the covenant order. What is certain is that he is “different” from the ten kings, that his campaign targets Israel’s covenant life rather than Gentile political arrangements, and that his end is absolute: “whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:8).
Paul also introduces the reality of restraint. He teaches that the “mystery of lawlessness” is already at work, but that it is presently being held back until the one who restrains is removed; only then will the lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord will destroy by the breath of His mouth and by the brightness of His appearing (2 Thessalonians 2:7–8). Scripture does not plainly identify the restrainer. Some have seen in this the Spirit’s particular restraining ministry, others the preserving presence of the faithful, others the order of civil authority, and others simply the sovereign decree that fixes the appointed time. What is clear is that the restraint is providential. The man of sin does not break through by his own brilliance or strength; he is allowed to be revealed when God determines that the hour has come. Even in the manifestation of open rebellion, God remains Lord of the timing.
Paul emphasizes that the unveiling of this ruler will be accompanied by powerful deception. The man of sin will come “according to the working of Satan,” with all kinds of power, signs, and lying wonders, and with every form of unrighteous deception among those who are perishing (2 Thessalonians 2:9–10). Yet the deeper root of this deception lies in the human response to truth. Those who are deceived are those who did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved, but took pleasure in unrighteousness. Because they rejected the love of the truth, God gives them over to a strong delusion so that they believe the lie (2 Thessalonians 2:10–12). The final lawless one does not appear in a vacuum; he embodies and concentrates a lawlessness that has been working in hidden form throughout the age—the “mystery of lawlessness”—and he finds his audience among those who have already chosen lies over truth.
In this way Paul shows that the man of sin and the abomination in the sanctuary are not an isolated aberration at the end of history, but the mature fruit of a process that has been at work throughout this age. The “mystery of lawlessness” has already been advancing quietly in doctrine, by diluting and twisting the apostolic gospel; in worship, by retaining religious forms while losing the fear of God and the obedience of faith; and in Christian living, by redefining sin, excusing disobedience, and accommodating the flesh. In the man of sin this hidden rebellion comes to harvest as the final outworking of Adamic corruption: the spirit of rebellion that has long worked in the “sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2) reaches full, unveiled expression in one man, who embodies it and enthrones himself in the holy place, turning the restored covenant order toward himself. At that moment the Lord Jesus will appear, and in a single instant the long-growing revolt will be brought to its end, even as the Spirit of grace brings the faithful to full, unveiled likeness to the Last Adam at His appearing.
The Great Tribulation as Israel’s Covenant Judgment
Because the Lord Jesus explicitly quotes Daniel 12:1 when He speaks of the “great tribulation,” the covenantal nature of that tribulation is firmly established. Daniel’s “time of trouble such as never was” concerns “your people” and “your holy city.” Jeremiah names it “the time of Jacob’s trouble.” Zechariah sees it as a refining fire in “all the land” of Israel. In every case the focus is Israel as the nation placed under the Torah, bearing covenant responsibility before God.
Israel is the firstborn nation, the only people to have stood at Sinai and said “All that the LORD has spoken we will do” (Exodus 19:8). They received the Law, the promises, the covenants, the sanctuary service. They also broke that covenant and suffered repeated judgments under its terms. Yet their covenant accountability did not end with the exile, nor with the destruction of the Second Temple. As long as Israel seeks to stand before God on Sinai ground, clinging to the Torah apart from the New Covenant in Christ, Israel is accountable to the blessings and curses of that Law.
The great tribulation is the final, concentrated expression of that accountability. It is the last sifting of Jacob under the Law before the Lord appears. A remnant within Israel will be preserved and refined through this fire, calling on the name of the Lord and being acknowledged by Him as His people; many others will fall under judgment. The Church, by contrast, is not placed under Sinai. It is not a nation with a land-covenant, an earthly sanctuary, and a calendar of feasts. Its relation to the Law is different. It is not called to flee from Judea when the abomination is set up. It participates in this crisis indirectly—through prayer, through witness, and through the inward sifting of its own members—but the “time of Jacob’s trouble” is not a final “tribulation of the Church.” It is the last covenant judgment of Israel under the Law.
The Shortening of the Days and the Mercy of God Toward the Remnant
Yet even as the Scriptures establish that a remnant will be saved through this fire, they also reveal that the tribulation itself is not open-ended. The Lord Jesus Himself declares that the days of this crisis will be cut short: “And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:22). The tribulation has a defined period in Daniel’s framework—the second half of the final week, beginning at the midpoint when the abomination is set up and sacrifice ceases (Daniel 9:27). But the Lord indicates that even this appointed period will not be allowed to run to its full natural conclusion. God intervenes and compresses the judgment for the sake of the elect—the remnant within Israel whom He has determined to save.
Paul confirms this reality with a quotation from Isaiah that is among the most important prophetic texts applied to Israel’s future. Writing to the Romans about the salvation of Israel, Paul declares: “Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel: ‘Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth’” (Romans 9:27–28, quoting Isaiah 10:22–23). The language is precise and deliberate. The Greek verb syntemnō (συντέμνω) means to cut short, to compress, to bring to a swift conclusion. God does not prolong the judgment beyond what its purpose requires. He finishes the work—He accomplishes everything the refining fire was designed to accomplish—and He does so in compressed time, in righteousness, because the purpose of the judgment has been fulfilled in the remnant.
The connection between the Lord’s words in Matthew 24:22 and Paul’s quotation of Isaiah in Romans 9:27–28 is unmistakable. The Lord says the days of the great tribulation will be shortened for the elect’s sake. Paul says God will make a short work upon the earth and the remnant will be saved. Both are speaking about the same event—the final covenant crisis in Israel—and both affirm that God compresses the judgment rather than allowing it to exhaust its full theoretical duration. The shortening is not an act of divine uncertainty or improvisation. It is an act of righteousness—God cutting the work short because the fire has done its refining, the remnant has called on His name, and there is no further need for the judgment to continue.
This means that the appearing of the Lord Jesus is not scheduled for the final day of a prophetic countdown. It is the sovereign interruption of the crisis at the moment God determines that the remnant has been refined and the purpose of the judgment has been fulfilled. The man of sin does not get to complete his program. The tribulation does not run to its theoretical end. God finishes the work and cuts it short in righteousness, and the remnant is saved out of it—exactly as Jeremiah promised: “It is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it” (Jeremiah 30:7).
The great tribulation, as severe as it is, is bounded not only by God’s purpose but by God’s mercy toward the remnant. He will not allow the fire to burn longer than the refining requires. The shortening of the days is itself an act of covenant faithfulness—the same God who promised Abraham that his seed would bless all nations will not allow the final crisis to destroy the very people through whom that promise runs. The judgment serves the covenant. The fire serves the restoration. And when the remnant is ready, the Lord appears, and the long night of Jacob’s trouble gives way to the dawn of the Day of the Lord.
The Church’s Experience at the End: Deception, False Peace, and Spiritual Negligence
While Israel passes through this covenant crisis in Judea, the Church scattered among the nations faces a different, equally serious trial. The Lord Jesus does not present a distinct, end-time global persecution of Christians as the defining mark of the close of the age. Persecution is a constant reality for the faithful: “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). In some places and times it intensifies; in others it lessens. But the unique feature of the end is not a universal spike of suffering; it is a universal spread of deception and spiritual lethargy.
The Lord’s warnings to His disciples in the Olivet discourse begin with deception. “See that no one deceives you,” He says, “for many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many” (Matthew 24:4–5). He returns to this warning throughout the discourse. False prophets arise and “deceive many” (Matthew 24:11). The deception intensifies until, “if possible, even the elect” would be misled (Matthew 24:24). Signs and wonders—impressive, apparently miraculous phenomena—accompany the false prophets, making their deception difficult to detect on the surface.
Paul confirms this picture from every angle. He speaks of a “falling away”—not mere drift, but deliberate departure from the faith—that will precede the Day of the Lord (2 Thessalonians 2:3). He warns of a time when people will “not endure sound doctrine,” accumulating teachers who tell them what they want to hear, turning from truth toward religious fables (2 Timothy 4:3–4). He describes professing believers who have “a form of godliness” but deny its power (2 Timothy 3:5)—people who maintain the outward structures of Christian religion while the fear of God and the obedience of faith have long since drained away.
The Lord’s parables of the ten virgins and the talents press this home with devastating clarity. The virgins did not face an enemy from outside; they fell asleep while waiting for the bridegroom (Matthew 25:1–5). The foolish virgins had lamps—the outward form of readiness—but no oil; they looked prepared but were not. The unfaithful servant was not crushed by an oppressor; he buried his talent out of fear and complacency, said in his heart “my master is delaying his coming,” and began to eat and drink with the drunkards (Matthew 25:26–30; 24:48–49). His master came on a day he did not expect, cut him asunder, and assigned him his portion with the hypocrites, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. The unfaithful servant does not cease to belong to the household; he is a servant of the same master. But he forfeits his place and enters the discipline of the Age to Come.
The distinctive end-time danger for the Church is therefore not external violence but internal spiritual sleep—deception, negligence, the slow cooling of love, and the gradual loss of watchfulness for the Lord’s appearing. The Lord’s command is simple and searching: watch, be ready, keep oil in your lamp, be found doing the master’s will. The time between His ascension and His appearing is not a holiday but a stewardship. Every day is a day in which the soul is either being saved or being neglected. Every choice either adds oil to the lamp or allows it to diminish. The Lord who will appear is the same Lord who speaks now, and His word will judge in that day those who heard and did not do (John 12:48).
Conclusion
The Appearing of the Lord Jesus Ends the Crisis Instantly
When the Scriptures are allowed to interpret one another in their given order, without being overridden by speculative readings of Revelation, the portrait of the end of this age is neither chaotic nor obscure. It is remarkably coherent.
Daniel shows four Mediterranean empires rising from the Great Sea and dominating Israel’s world. The fourth, Rome and its continuing legacy, is “different” from the rest: stronger, more integrated, more enduring. Over time it reappears as a divided order of ten kings—the rulers of the nations surrounding Israel, arising from the eastern and western provinces of the fourth kingdom, bearing the iron of Roman-derived statehood and the clay of internal division that prevents genuine unity. Israel itself stands outside the ten, the covenant nation around which the beast’s final configuration arranges itself. From among these ten arises the little horn, different from them in kind—not a Gentile ruler seeking territorial advantage but a covenant insider who targets Israel’s worship, confirms a covenant with many, subdues three of the surrounding kings, and ultimately seats himself in the inner sanctuary, claiming the place that belongs to the God of Israel alone.
The Lord Jesus confirms Daniel and locates this crisis in Judea. He warns of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place and instructs those in Judea to flee. He identifies this moment as the great tribulation by quoting Daniel 12:1. He warns that Israel will receive “another” who comes in his own name where they rejected the true Messiah (John 5:43). He describes the atmosphere of the end as days like those of Noah and Lot: ordinary life continuing while judgment approaches, many saying “peace and safety” and surprised by sudden destruction. And He promises that the days of this tribulation will be shortened for the elect’s sake—that God will not allow the fire to burn beyond what the refining of the remnant requires (Matthew 24:22).
Paul gathers Daniel and the Lord Jesus into his teaching on the man of sin. This man, the son of perdition, presents himself as an insider to Israel’s covenant life, is received by many in Israel, and seats himself in the inner sanctuary as God. He embodies the age-long mystery of lawlessness in one final, concentrated form and deceives those who refused to love the truth. Paul confirms Isaiah’s promise that God will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth, and the remnant will be saved (Romans 9:27–28).
While Israel passes through this covenant crisis, the Church faces its own end-time test: not a distinct worldwide tribulation uniquely targeting Christians, but the spread of deception, false confidence, moral collapse, and spiritual sleep. Forms of godliness persist while its power is denied. Many fall away from the faith; false prophets multiply; the love of many grows cold. The mystery of lawlessness works in hidden ways, undermining Scripture, reshaping morality, exalting self-rule, preparing the way for the final open rebellion.
All of this converges at the appearing of the Lord Jesus. His appearing is sudden, visible, and unmistakable—like lightning that flashes from one end of heaven to the other (Luke 17:24; Matthew 24:27). The man of sin is consumed by the breath of His mouth and destroyed by the brightness of His coming (2 Thessalonians 2:8). Israel’s great tribulation reaches its divinely appointed conclusion—the short work upon the earth that Paul and Isaiah foretold—and the remnant is saved out of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:7). The Church’s period of waiting is over; the falsehoods of the age are exposed; the faithful are gathered to the Lord. The present heavens begin to pass away, and the Seventh Day, the sabbath-long age of judgment, begins.
But the appearing is not a single, undifferentiated moment. The Prophets, the Lord Jesus, and the Apostles reveal an ordered sequence of distinct acts that unfold at His coming—the solitary judgment of the nations surrounding Israel, the deliverance of the remnant on the Mount of Olives, the universal resurrection, the glorification of the faithful, the gathering of the tares, and the entrance of the Royal Priesthood into the Heavenly Jerusalem. The following chapter will unfold this sequence in its canonical order, tracing from the Torah through the Apostolic writings the precise pattern by which the Lord Jesus brings this present evil age to its end and inaugurates the Day of the Lord.
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