A sermon on Mark 13. This sermon was preached at Lebanon Valley Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.lebanonvalleypca.com
Scripture Reading: Mark 13 (entire chapter)
Today I’m going to be a bit more bold on what I think Mark 13 means.
However, it’s wise not to be too dogmatic when it comes to some aspects of eschatology—the understanding of the last things. We can and should be dogmatic on the return of Christ, that the return of Christ is yet to come and will come. We should be dogmatic in refuting errors where eschatology is concerned. But we should note that there’s very little consensus on some of these matters here in Mark 13 among Christians. And I’m certainly not the final word on this.
I remember when I met my friend David Kertland, pastor at Hershey PCA, we were talking one time, and he said, “You know, there’s scholars and there’s theologians that are in the deep waters of some of these things.” And he said, “I envision myself more just splashing around in the puddles.” And that made a lot of sense to me. I’ve always remembered that because there are those who have given extensive, sometimes their whole life, to certain studies of particular topics. And in some ways, we’re just splashing around in the puddles.
But if you want to go a bit deeper and know what I’m drawing upon here, there are two books that I’ll recommend to you. The one is The Last Days According to Jesus by R.C. Sproul, and the second is Kingdom Come by Sam Storms, if you’re so inclined to go into some deeper waters.
We noted last week that the challenge we have here in Mark 13 is to defend the credibility of Jesus and the credibility of Scripture.
At first, Mark 13 in this narrative gives us a softball where that’s concerned. Jesus prophesies about the destruction of the Jewish temple and the city of Jerusalem. He does that about 40 years before the event takes place in AD 70. He says these things—He says to His disciples—will happen within your lifetime. And they did happen. In AD 70, Titus, the Roman general, sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and certainly what every Jew thought was unthinkable happened.
It may remind you of like the person who said the Titanic could never sink. How could these million-pound stones of this gorgeous marble, gold-laid temple ever fall? But it did fall. We know that historically. Jesus said in Luke 21:24, Luke’s version of this historical text, “They will,” Jesus said, “they will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles.”
And we noted that these are predicted prophecies of the highest magnitude. The astonishing and historical accuracy of this prophecy that came to pass should be one of the clearest vindications and authentications of Jesus as His claim to be the Son of God.
Case closed, right?
But the challenge comes, of course, because in the same context of Jesus talking about the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, He says in verses 21 to 31 that you will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then in verse 30, He says, “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”
So He not only prophesies the fall of Jerusalem and the temple, but included in that future prophecy is His return in the clouds. So there’s the dilemma. There’s where the British philosopher and mathematician says, “This is why I’m not a Christian. Jesus was false. He was mistaken.”
So what are we going to do with this dilemma here?
Now let’s let that question hang there for a minute and look first at what leads to this extensive teaching and prophecy by Jesus. The disciples marveling at the temple—Jesus says not one stone will be left upon another.
Privately, these disciples come to Jesus and ask two questions: When will these things be? And what will be the sign? (verse 4).
And I noted to you last week that the answer that Jesus begins to give to those questions—“When will these things be?” Not “how will they be,” but “when”? Now, “What will be the sign?”—the answer that Jesus gives looks remarkably like an outline of the Book of Acts.
Starting with verses 5 and 6, He says don’t be deceived because there’s coming false messiahs and pretenders. That’s the first sign that Jesus says will be, and this was clearly fulfilled in the first century.
The Book of Acts records several figures: Theudas, Judas the Galilean, Simon the magician, Bar-Jesus, an unnamed revolutionary Egyptian—who all claimed messianic power and led many astray. The historian Josephus notes that during the time of Nero and the governor Felix, Judea was filled with impostors, false prophets, rebels who led people astray with false hope.
So just as Jesus warned, the generation before Jerusalem’s fall saw a surge of messianic pretenders.
Now, secondly, verses 7 and 8, He says there will be great social disturbances, wars, rumors of wars, natural calamities and disasters. You see that in 7 and 8—they will hear rumors of wars. There will be wars. Don’t be alarmed. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. There’s going to be earthquakes, famines. These are just the beginning of birth pains.
So Jesus warned of all these things. And between AD 33 and 70, these signs were vividly fulfilled. Violent uprisings and massacres occurred across the region: 20,000 Jews were killed in Caesarea, 50,000 in Alexandria, 10,000 in Damascus. The region was marked by political unrest and war. And of course, also natural disaster struck. Famines plagued the Near East, and they are recorded many times in Acts. A massive earthquake hit in AD 61. Pompeii was devastated in AD 63.
So these events confirm Jesus’s words within that generation.
Thirdly, persecution of the apostles. Verse 11: “And they will bring you to trial and deliver you over. Do not be anxious. The Holy Spirit will tell you what to say. It will be given to you in that hour by the Holy Spirit.”
So on each of these things we have to ask: Did they happen?
Well, persecution of apostles—did that happen? We noted that most of the early church leaders would be martyred, except John, who would be in exile on Patmos. And the reference to courts, councils, and synagogues would seem to indicate a first-century fulfillment. Of course, after AD 70, the Jewish religious and political system ceased to exist. So those would not be the context where persecution happened in synagogues. So those specific persecutions were unique to that time. So that was fulfilled.
Then, verse 10. Fourthly, verse 10: “This short verse here—and the gospel must be first proclaimed to all nations.”
Now this statement is a bit more difficult to argue for what I’m arguing for. People who would see this text as all in the future—it’s all coming—they see what Jesus is talking about here as the end of human history. They would say, “See, the gospel certainly hasn’t gone out over all the world yet. The gospel hasn’t gone to China, hasn’t gone to the American Indians. The Eskimos didn’t hear the gospel. So that’s not fulfilled.”
But what Jesus says is that the gospel must be preached to all nations—all ethne—all the Gentiles. It’s very interesting that within just a few decades of Jesus’s prophetic words here, Paul says in Colossians 1:6 that the gospel was bearing fruit and increasing in the whole world. He uses similar language in Romans 1:8, when he says, “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith, Romans, is proclaimed in all the world.”
So in that sense, this fulfillment is not to be understood in an absolute or exhaustive sense—that every individual across the globe will hear the gospel—but in the sense that the message had gone beyond Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. By AD 70, the gospel was advancing to the nations. As we see in Acts 8, Philip ministers to the Ethiopian eunuch. And what does he do but carry that gospel, that testimony, back to Africa?
So by the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, the gospel had indeed gone out to the whole Gentile world. And we know that after AD 70, Christianity was no longer perceived as a subset of Judaism, but was a distinct faith standing on its own, expanding through the whole known world. This would suggest a first-century fulfillment of verse 10.
And then verse 11—what does He say in answer to their question, “When will these things be, and what will be the sign?” Fifthly: a pervasive apostasy.
A pervasive apostasy. Look at verses 9–12, particularly verse 12: “And brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death.”
Now this is what theologians and church historians refer to as the lapsi problem. You often don’t hear of that problem. Lapsi problem—it’s that those who professed faith in Christ fell away under pressure.
Now, we often have a revisionist understanding of church history sometimes and romanticize church history. In other words, we imagine that all the Christians marched into the coliseum singing hymns as they were about to be devoured. We imagine that they stood before Nero in his courts ready to be burned, and they quoted the Psalms. And certainly many did display remarkable courage.
But Jesus’s words here in verse 12 remind us that was not universally so, was it? There were many professing Christians who denied Christ when under persecution and threats. They lapsed.
You think of the heaviness and the weightiness of what Jesus is saying here. There were fathers who said, “Don’t kill me. I will deny Christ, and you can take my children.” There were brothers who delivered brothers over to death. There were children who gave up their parents.
Jesus says to His disciples that there are horrors that you will endure at the hands of men—even from the most intimate of relationships. Those whom you seemed and perceived to be friends and family will become your traitors and enemies. And so many lapsed that it became a controversy in the early church, as some of those deniers and detractors came back to the church for readmittance. And the question was, do they remain excommunicated? Do they have to do penance? Do they have to come under probation?
The point is—some caved. Some abandoned Christ. Others betrayed family and friends to save themselves. The first century had its traitors, just as Jesus warned.
Now sixthly, verse 14: the abomination of desolation.
“But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.”
Now, the abomination of desolation—literally, the abomination that causes desolation. In the Old Testament, abomination referred to an object of disgust or hatred, something that causes a revulsion—an idolatrous offense or affront to the true worship of God.
The abomination of desolation, of course, is referred to four times in the book of Daniel. And the immediate reference was to the Syrian king Antiochus, who ruled over Palestine in 175 BC. And he called himself “Manifest God.” In 168 BC, he slaughtered 40,000 Jews and plundered the temple. He sacrificed a pig on the altar of burnt offering and sprinkled the broth from the unclean flesh all over the holy grounds as an act of deliberate defilement. And then he erected an image of Zeus above the altar. It was a sacrilege of indescribable proportions.
That would have been imprinted on the minds of the Jews. And so it appears that when Jesus envisions something of an abomination of desolation, He’s envisioning something of a repeat performance of what happened in that day.
“Let the reader understand”—it means let the reader understand the book of Daniel and what it said there in that initial abomination of desolation—the desecration of the temple.
But He’s saying something is coming likewise in the city of Jerusalem, in the temple, in your lifetime. And whether that abominable sacrilege was actual idolatry in the temple, or was it the entrance of the Roman imperial eagle standard erected in the temple area—we don’t know.
But what we do know is it was common practice to assert sovereignty over a nation by dethroning its gods and replacing them by those of the conqueror. Jesus says this will happen.
And He says, when you see this happen, those who are in Judea—flee to the mountains.
“Let the one who is on the housetop not go down nor enter his house to take anything out. Let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. Alas for women who are pregnant or for those who are nursing infants in those days. Pray that it may not happen in winter.”
Now what is Jesus saying? When you see this take place in the temple—run for the hills. Don’t hesitate.
Again, Luke’s account of this in Luke 21:20, Jesus says:
“When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that the desolation has come near. Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let those who are inside the city depart out of the city. Let those who are out in the country not enter the city. For those are the days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written.”
And we know historically this would be the first great holocaust of the Jews. Over one million Jews slaughtered in Jerusalem as the Roman armies descended upon them.
Where did they flee? Well, they fled from the villages to the walled city of Jerusalem. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Don’t run to the mountains. Don’t run to the hills. Run to where there’s protection—the walled cities. That was what was believed to be the safest place.
But they ran into the city, and Rome overcame the city, and there was a great loss of life.
So Jesus gives this counterintuitive information here and says, “When you see this happen, don’t go into the walled city where you think there’s safety—flee to the mountains, to the hills.” And there are historical documents that confirm that the remaining Jewish Christians in Jerusalem did indeed do just that before the city fell, showing that the earliest believers knew that Mark 13 applied directly to their situation.
And what do you think the disciples—just imagine this—what do you think the disciples of Jesus did when they saw all these signs beginning to take place, and then He said, “When you see this, run”?
I would think someone took Jesus seriously and said, “Thank you, Jesus, for this inside information.” And they did exactly what Jesus said to do. They fled to the mountains.
In this case, loyalty meant leaving. Destruction was coming because of Israel’s apostasy, the temple’s pollution, the rejection of the Messiah. And Jesus paints a picture of horror so that His followers would have the foresight to flee for their lives. And we know they did.
And that brings us to verses 19–23:
“For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now and never will be. … I have told you all things beforehand.”
Now we know the dominant view in evangelical Christianity is that this passage here is speaking about a great tribulation at the end of history, prior to Christ’s advent, prior to Christ’s return.
But if we follow the context and trajectory of this passage, it sure seems like Jesus is speaking about this catastrophic event in the history of the Jews, does it not? Involving the destruction of more than one million of their people, the sacred city, the holy temple—that’s what He’s referring to: a great tribulation that is coming upon their earth.
And if that be the case, then the “end of the age” spoken of here is not the end of history, but the end of the Jewish age that took place within 40 years after the prediction of Christ—exactly within the timeframe of those He was talking to. “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”
That “the end” was the end of the economy of redemption that focused on the Jewish nation. That comes to an end. And at that crisis moment, the Christian community emerges no longer as a subset of Judaism, standing on its own—one church made of Jew and Gentile, united not by ethnicity or temple worship, but faith in the risen Christ. And the Old Covenant shadows give way to the full light of the New Covenant reality.
No longer centered in Jerusalem, the church is now the temple of the Holy Spirit spread across the nations, grounded in the finished work of Christ. And the church is, as Galatians says, the true Israel of God—one people of promise, called out from every nation, and gathered in one body under the Lord.
Now if verse 19 doesn’t mean that, but instead means the end of the history of the world, then obviously that didn’t take place within the time frame of one human generation—and it still hasn’t taken place.
And that brings us to the heart of the dilemma. That question has been hanging for a while now—let’s bring it down here.
Here’s the heart of the dilemma, verse 24:
“But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light. The stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”
There is in this future prophecy not only the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem—which we can check off as having happened—but also Jesus saying He’ll return in the clouds.
So we have to ask, what are we going to do with this?
Well, first, we could be like the critic Bertrand Russell and all those higher critics who say Jesus was a false prophet. “He was a good moral teacher, but He’s not God. He’s a mere man. He was mistaken. He meant the generation of His time lasting 40 years. It didn’t come to pass.”
Well, I don’t think that’s an option. It’s always a bad idea to approach the Scripture with unbelief. Unbelief in the truths of God is at the bottom of almost all those sins that ruin the soul. Come to the Scripture with curiosity, come to it with questions, come to it with humility—but come to it as the Word of God.
So that’s not an option for us.
Secondly, then, we could treat the term “generation” as non-literal and indefinite. In other words, when Jesus says “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place,” He means “The people of God will survive till the end of time. People like you—Peter and James and Andrew—you will be around. People like you will be around when these things take place.”
Or He could have meant “this wicked generation”—people like the wicked, people like this. “These kinds of people will not pass away.” In other words, subsequent generations of people are included, by way of extension, in the audience of Jesus’s words.
The third option—as those there are those who say Jesus’s prophecies here were fulfilled in a spiritual sense. The theologian C.H. Dodd did a lot of work in this. He said the disciples saw the manifestation of the kingdom of God in Jesus’s ministry. They saw His transfiguration. They saw Him in His resurrection state. They saw Him in His ascension. So in that sense, Jesus’s prophecy was fulfilled—that He came with great glory, as verse 26 says.
There’s a fourth option: You can see this passage as an example of the “already, but not yet” sense of the kingdom of God. In other words, the kingdom of God has already come, but at the end of time, there remains a final consummation of the kingdom. So there’s a primary and secondary fulfillment of this passage. This is seen in the Old Testament—frequently the prophecies had an initial fulfillment, but then they had a secondary fulfillment later. So that “the coming in clouds” speaks of Jesus coming at the end of history—His second coming—bringing with Him paradise.
Fifthly—are you still with me? It’s not 11 yet—fifthly, dispensationalism sees this as all future. The whole chapter—all coming.
I could tell you stories. I don’t want to belabor it, but I can tell you stories. When I was a child, we heard the preaching about the secret rapture so much. We had preaching on these end-time texts so much.
Now I had the privilege of having a stay-at-home mother. So Mom was always home. Some of your children know what that’s like—Mom’s home, you come in, Mom’s there. Mom’s there for all your needs.
I remember coming in from school, and there was some food being prepared on the counter—but no Mom. I thought the rapture happened. I did. I really did.
Now, you ask my wife—she had similar feelings and experiences like that.
Now, out of all these options—of course beyond the critic’s option—this (dispensationalism) is an error, because it assumes that all of these things were written to us. Now, if you mean the application of the words to the disciples comes down to us as Christians through history with principles that we can extract—then yes.
But this is to a specific people, a specific time in history.
Dispensationalism always wants you to read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other—or we don’t have newspapers today, read the Bible in one hand and watch CNN on the other, watch Fox News on the other, and try to combine them. And that often leads to a lot of problems.
The last option we have is to take a look at what Jesus says referring to His coming in the Olivet Discourse. And rather than pointing to His final return at the end of history—which will happen—He may be speaking of His coming in judgment at the end of the Jewish age.
If that is the case, then verses 25 to 28 have nothing to do with Jesus’s second coming, but rather this is apocalyptic language that speaks of the coming of judgment on Jerusalem in AD 70.
Now, we’ve noted this is a complex chapter, and one of the reasons why it is such a complex chapter is because you do have this mixture of literal and figurative speech in it, don’t you?
Someone says, “Do you take the Scripture literally?” There’s no other way to take the Scripture. The Scripture is a literal document, but with different genres. So we have poetry in Scripture. We have epistles—letters—in Scripture. We have historical narratives in Scripture. We have metaphors and similes in Scripture.
And we also know there’s apocalyptic language in Scripture. So there are literal things—no one takes this whole chapter as figurative—there are literal things. We just went through all of them.
But when it comes to the time frame and the coming, we are either going to take the time references as figurative and His coming as literal, or we will take the time frame references literally and His coming as figurative.
Again, the major way in which orthodox evangelical Christians treat this text is by looking at the time frame references as being figurative. When Jesus says, “This generation will not pass away before all these things come to pass,” they say He’s using the term generation in a figurative manner. He’s not giving a time frame of 40 years. He’s saying all these things will be fulfilled, and then—when people like you are here…
Of course, to the Jewish ear, that would have made no sense. And that’s a very common approach.
But the other approach is to take the time frame references as literal but recognize the language of Jesus’s coming in this chapter is apocalyptic.
Verses 24 to 27 is apocalyptic language:
“The sun will be dark… the moon will not give its light… the stars will fall from heaven… the powers in the heavens will be shaken… the Son of Man will come in the clouds…”
That’s apocalyptic language.
If you go to Isaiah 13—let me just read this quickly to you. Isaiah 13, verse 6:
“Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; as destruction from the Almighty it will come. Therefore all hands will be feeble, every human heart will melt. They will be dismayed; pangs and agony will seize them; they will be in anguish like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at one another; their faces aflame.
Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light.”
Of course, you can see the similarities between Isaiah 13 and what Jesus says here in Mark 13.
This kind of apocalyptic language is common in the Old Testament. When God’s judgment was announced, it was described in terms that were graphic and astronomical—there was cosmic upheaval.
And so the suggestion is Jesus is not talking about His Second Coming here in verses 24–27, but these verses are describing—in apocalyptic language—that Jesus would come in judgment upon the house of Israel in AD 70.
Now, Josephus—Flavius Josephus—again, a Jewish historian, lived from AD 37 to 100, wrote a comprehensive 200-page eyewitness account of the fall of Jerusalem. He wrote something about what happened in AD 70.
And of course, you take this with a grain of salt—Josephus is not fully inspired, of course—but he notes that there was an astonishing celestial occurrence in AD 70. This is what he writes. He seemed to be reticent to talk about it. He said:
“Besides this, a few days after the feast, a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared. I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable were it not related by those who saw it, and were not the events that followed it so considerable in nature as to deserve such signals. For before sun-setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running among the clouds and surrounding cities.
Moreover, at that feast which we call Pentecost, as the priests were going by night into the inner temple—as their custom was—they said that in the first place, they felt a quaking and heard a great noise. And after that, they heard a sound as of a great multitude, saying, ‘Let us remove hence.’”
So Josephus is saying that at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, multitudes of people saw in the skies chariots and armored soldiers moving around the clouds.
Now, you pause for a minute, and you think about 2 Kings 6 when you hear that. When Elisha is in Dothan, remember, and his servant is fearful when he sees the Syrian army. But Elisha prays that the Lord would open his eyes. And when his eyes were opened, what did he see?
“The mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”
And so it could be Jesus is speaking of judgment that is coming upon Israel—fulfilled in AD 70, fulfilled in that first century.
And as we close then, certain passages begin to make a little more sense to us—perhaps.
Matthew 10:23:
“You will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”
Matthew 26:64, Jesus said to the high priest:
“You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
And then, of course, so many texts in the New Testament:
- Romans 13: “The night is far gone; the day is at hand.”
- 1 Corinthians 7: “The present form of this world is passing away.”
- 1 Corinthians 10:11: “The end of the ages has come upon us.”
- Philippians 4:5: “The Lord is at hand.”
- James 5:8–9: “The Judge is standing at the door. The coming of the Lord is at hand.”
- 1 Peter 4:7: “The end of all things is at hand.”
- 1 John 2:18: “We know we are in the last hour.”
We have verse after verse in the New Testament that calls to this situation in the first century where the day of the Lord was coming—a day of vengeance, of God’s visitation and wrath.
Closing Applications
Now, as we close——there are different ways faithful believers have approached this chapter. Again, this is not the final word, but this one thing is clear: Jesus always keeps His word.
So I think as we look at this text, it presses upon us three very brief questions we can ask ourselves.
1. Do you and I take Jesus’s words seriously?
Do we take God’s Word seriously?
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Word will never pass away.”
And I have to ask—if I was on Mount Olives that day, did I listen to what Jesus said? Would I have listened? Would I have run for the hills because Jesus said to do that? Do I cling to His Word like that?
Do you?
2. Do you truly care for the condition of your soul?
Do you truly care for the condition of your soul?
The Scripture tells us that the souls of the wicked will be cast into hell, where they will remain in torments and utter darkness.
As we think of coming judgment days, there are so many that have no serious concern about their spiritual state at all.
May the Lord keep us from dry, useless preachers and careless, unconcerned congregations—but cause us to be zealous and faithful and long for the conversion of souls before the final day, before our own final hour.
3. Do you find your only shelter from the coming judgment in Jesus Christ alone?
Francis Schaeffer had this little thought experiment he did. He said:
“Imagine God puts a little invisible tape recorder around everybody’s neck. And the only thing the tape recorder ever picks up is when you tell somebody else how they ought to be living. So only when you start to say, ‘You ought to…’—suddenly, click—the recorder starts. When you’re telling people, ‘You ought to be like this, this is how it ought to be…’ In other words, the tape recorder records your standards for behavior, your standards for people’s lives.
And then at the great Judgment Day, when we’re all standing before the throne of God, God says: ‘You know what? I’m not going to judge you by My standards. I’m not going to judge you by the Ten Commandments, by the Golden Rule. I’m not going to judge you by My law, the Scripture, by the example of My Son Jesus. I’m going to judge you by your own standards.’”
And the recorder is played.
Schaeffer’s point is clear, isn’t it?
We don’t even follow our own standards, let alone the standards of God.
And so on Judgment Day, there is not a person among us who will be able to stand and pass.
But to become a Christian, Schaeffer says, is to say:
“I could never stand in the judgment. I can never pass on my own. But my Judge was willing to come and take judgment for me.”
Have you come to Christ like that?
Heidelberg Catechism 52
It’s amazing——Heidelberg Catechism, Question 52:
Q. What comfort is it to you that Christ shall come again to judge the living and the dead?
A. That in all afflictions and persecutions, with uplifted head, I may wait for the Judge from heaven, who has already offered Himself to the judgment of God for me, and has taken away from me all the curse.
Friends, you must flee to Christ alone for shelter from the coming judgment.
Let’s pray.
Father, as we read this text spoken by the words of the Savior, cause us not just to view it as an academic exercise, but the reality that the words of Your Son will always come to pass, and that He is King. And that if we would stand in our own sin apart from You, unreconciled to You, we deserve the wrath of hell—of great darkness and tribulation.
Cause the reality of that to strike fear into the heart of the one who does not know You. But cause it also to bring comfort and gratitude to Your people that can stand and say, “I take comfort in the coming of the Judge, for He is the one who took judgment and condemnation on the cross that I may live.”
Give us that kind of sobriety and gratitude and praise, we pray in Jesus’s name.
Amen.