Page 177 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture in the Gospels
do the Jewish saints addressed by Jesus and represented by
the apostles belong, Israel or the Church?”4
Gundry unnecessarily complicated his problem. Obvi­
ously the apostles in some sense belonged to both groups. The
real question is not whom they represent, but what the pas­
sage itself states. The Gospel of Matthew, while in general
addressing itself to the subject of why Jesus Christ did not
bring in His millennial kingdom at His first coming, actually
involves three dispensations in its teaching, sometimes refer­
ring to the law of Moses in the Old Testament, sometimes to
the present church age as in the announcement of the coming
church in Matthew 16:18, and sometimes to the end of the age
and the Millennium that will follow. All of these phases of
truth were addressed to His disciples.
Most important in the consideration of Matthew 24 is
what many expositors overlook, namely, that the Olivet Dis­
course is an answer to specific questions of the apostles, a fact
that Gundry chose to ignore. After Christ’s prediction of the
destruction of the temple, according to Mark 13:3, Peter,
James, John, and Andrew asked Christ three questions. The
questions are itemized in Matthew 24:3, which states: “As
Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to
him privately. ‘Tell us,’ they said, ‘when will this happen, and
what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the
age?’”
The portion of Christ’s answer relating to the destruction
of Jerusalem in a.d. 70 is found in Luke 21:20-24. The portion
of Christ’s answer dealing with the signs of His coming and
the end of the age is given in Matthew 24:4-30 and includes
the dramatic description of His second coming. The second
and third questions, for all practical purposes, are the same, as
they both deal with the same event, the second coming of
Christ. What the disciples were seeking were signs that would
indicate that the promised kingdom was about to be intro­
duced.

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