Matthew Chapter 24

VERSE 20-22 “And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. For 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. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.”

This gathering of the Church occurs in what is called a “harvest” time, at the close of a summer time of favor. Our Lord explained (Matt. 13:30, 37-43) that in this harvest he would garner his wheat and burn the tares in a great time of trouble following. It is still the custom in country places to leave the burning off of refuse until the winter. We understand our Lord to mean, then, that we are to seek help and strength to escape from Babylon before the wintertime of her trouble comes upon her.

We are to remember that there are to be two classes of wheat saved in this harvest–contrary to nature though it be.

(1) The “over-comers,” the faithful and promptly obedient who get out BEFORE “winter” and are “accounted worthy to escape all those things that shall come to pass.” (Luke 21:36)

(2) Those loyal, but not promptly obedient children of God, overcharged, with zeal not according to knowledge, and more or less contaminated with the spirit of the world. These will be helped out of Babylon when she is falling, and will flee IN the wintertime, saying in the words of the Prophet, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended [winter has come], and we are not saved (saved from the Great Storm, the Great Tribulation which is upon us, but more importantly not saved with the chief or great salvation, the salvation to which we were called).” (Jer. 8:20) The Lord very graciously indicates that all the truly loyal of these shall ultimately “come up OUT of great tribulation” and be before the throne (not in the throne with the “little flock” who inherit the Kingdom as joint-heirs with Christ), having washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. (Rev. 7:14, 15) Let us pray, and labor accordingly, that we be through our flight before the “winter” of trouble comes.

We are to pray and strive that our flight be not even on the Sabbath day. What Sabbath day?

Not the Seventh day of the week, nor the First day; for “new moons and Sabbaths” surely would prove no hindrance to Christians in any physical flight. (Col. 2:16)

The Sabbath meant is the great antitypical Sabbath—the Millennium, the Seventh-thousand-year Sabbath. If we got started on our flight before it began chronologically, so much the more favorable: and the farther we get into it the more difficult it will be to get free and to abandon Babylon, at the very time it needs and pleads most for our help to sustain it.

But God has declared that BABYLON MUST FALL, and no power can sustain her: and no one who realizes how imperfect is her work, and how good and gracious will be the work of the Lord after she is removed and the true Church glorified, could wish to hinder the Lord’s work for one moment.

Yet this is precisely what many professing Christians attempt to do all the time, insisting that there must be a revival (a renewal) in the church, a revival in the nation, a return to the so-called Christian values upon which this nation was established. They would attempt to put a balm upon Babylon, attempt to heal her, but alas this has already been attempted by none other than the Lord himself, and if he could not do it, what makes them imagine that can? (See Jer 51:6-9)

The great tribulation of this “winter” time is to be unprecedented; and our Lord’s assurance is, that nothing to compare with IT has or shall ever come upon the world.

This positively identifies his language with the trouble at the close of this Gospel age of which the prophet says, “At that time shall Michael [Christ] stand up [assume control]…and there shall be a time of trouble such as NEVER WAS since there was a nation.” (Dan. 12:1) It identifies it also with the period mentioned in Rev 11:17, 18 when “the nations were angry and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged.”

A distinction is made here in Verse 21 between THE Great Tribulation at the end of the Gospel and the general tribulations (Verse 9), which the saints have endured all throughout the Gospel age.

So great will this trouble be (at the end of the age) that without some intervening power to cut it short the entire race would eventually be exterminated. But God has prepared the intervening power–His Kingdom, Christ and his Church–“the elect.” The elect will intervene at the proper time and bring order out of earth’s confusion.” (D578-579)

Because this issue is of such grave importance to the Lord’s people at this time we will examine it in a bit more detail in our next post.