![]() Its location on Mount Moriah made it look like a mountain of gold. ![]() It had been under reconstruction for 46 years and was almost done. On one of these days, Luke writes that "some were talking about the temple, that it was adorned with beautiful stones and votive gifts (NASB)." They weren't kidding! The temple was considered one of the great wonders of the Roman world. ![]() In the final days of his earthly life, Jesus taught in the temple during the day and spent the night on the Mount of Olives. Jesus and his disciples were in Jerusalem at the time. We have to approach this passage with humility, but I want us to look at the broad strokes of the passage and nail down the things that are clear. No scholar has perfectly unraveled all the knots, and neither will we. This sermon has been the subject of more scholarly debate than any other passage in the Gospels. In Luke 21:5–36 Jesus delivers one of his better-known sermons-the Olivet Discourse. What if I told you that Jesus Christ made an amazingly accurate prediction of a future event-one that was substantiated by three different gospel writers and later confirmed by non-believing historians? You'd probably believe me, because the prediction wasn't made by a fifth grader it was made by Jesus. But let's face it: the idea of predicting the future fascinates us. I don't know about you, but I'm skeptical about that kind of stuff. "It's one of those things I sincerely want to believe was coincidental," Lucich said. An FBI spokesman couldn't be reached for comment. The statements were passed along to the FBI, but Lucich didn't know whether the agency had acted on the tip. It will begin in the United States, and the United States will lose." The child then missed the next two days of school. Rhonda Lucich, the director of elementary education for the school district, said the boy approached his teacher on the afternoon of September 10 and casually told her: "Tomorrow, World War III will begin. The day before terrorists attacked New York and Washington, a fifth grader in a Dallas suburb told his teacher that World War III would begin the next day. Along the way, he also stirs a profound Christological witness. In the shadow of that humility, Mitchell helps the audience see the big picture nature of the text first and foremost, with extra attention given to those details that matter most to correct interpretation. Mitchell sets the ground rules early on in the sermon: humility is the best attribute to guide you through this labyrinthine text. You may not foster the right tension of fear and hope. You may get bogged down in so many details that you miss the big picture. You may find yourself applying something regarding Jerusalem's destruction to the end of the world-and vice versa. Simply put: it's easy to mess up a difficult passage like Luke 21.
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