How To Interpret The Bible Correctly - Jerusalem, God, and History

When Jesus told His disciples and us about the future he built every word of it around one spot on earth (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21). Jesus framed His words about the rest of the history of this planet by the sight of Jerusalem in all its earthly glory spread in front of Him.

Look again at Christ's very first words in Matthew 24:2. All that He says about His second coming is introduced by those words.  He said keep your eye on Jerusalem. I am ascending from the Mount of Olives (the center of Jerusalem then and now) and I am returning to the Mount of Olives.

All of us here this evening live in a world inexorably drawn towards a climactic ending. It is not carbon emissions that will get us, it is not the rise of the seas—there is something bigger. The cataclysm that will end this world is focused upon one place, one people, and specifically, God says—one city called Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is the Trigger

Jerusalem is the trigger that will set off the grand finale for planet earth.

Twenty-six hundred years ago God foretold that the fate of the entire planet earth would hinge upon one city.

The city God named was not in the fledgling Roman Empire of that day, nor in the great Empires of Greece, Babylon, or Egypt, nor in the great Empire of China or off in the New World…no, it was a city named Jerusalem.

Jerusalem at that moment 2,600 years ago, a backwoods, off-the-beaten-track town that had just suffered complete destruction at the hands of the king of Babylon; and whose charred and blackened ruins were a mute testimony to the impossibility of what God's Word was saying.

•    Jerusalem would become the focus of the entire world.
•    Jerusalem will be a cup that into