Matthew 24:29-31

The last three months the Holy Spirit has led me back to these passages. This generation will by no means pass away until He reigns!

Although no one knows the exact day we must always be prepared to meet our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Jesus draws on various old testament traditions surrounding the Son of Man and the Day of the Lord to describe what it will be like at His Parousia. Faithlife Bible.

The Greek word parousia (παρουσία, parousia) means “presence” or “arrival.” It is used as a technical term to refer to the return of Christ in glory at the end of this world. 

In the earliest Christian literature, Christian expectation of the parousia of Jesus is explicitly portrayed as deriving from the teachings of Jesus Himself. While Jesus certainly understood His ministry as inaugurating the coming of the kingdom of God, He is also portrayed as having believed that the kingdom would not be brought to complete fulfillment until sometime in the future. This understanding of the kingdom of God as having been begun, but not yet fully established, is a well-known feature of New Testament eschatological teaching.

The New Testament writers consistently maintain the certainty of Christ’s return and that it might occur at any moment, but also that it is not given to humanity to know the exact time or circumstances of this event. As a result, the expectation of a future return of Christ retained a central conceptual role throughout the development of early Christian Christology, and so remained available to Christian teachers as an incentive to right behavior during the entire New Testament period and beyond.

These verse move chronologically to the close of the tribulation, a period that will be marked by monumental cosmic disturbances. The context here is the national repentance of Israel predicted in Zechariah 12:10. The gathering of the elect (God’s people, both Jews and Gentiles) will gloriously begin Christ’s reign. NKJ Bible.

Matthew 24:29–31 (NKJV)

²⁹ “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. ³⁰ Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. ³¹ And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

Isaiah 13:10 (NKJV)

¹⁰ For the stars of heaven and their constellations

Will not give their light;

The sun will be darkened in its going forth,

And the moon will not cause its light to shine.

Ezekiel 32:7 (NKJV)

⁷ When I put out your light,

I will cover the heavens, and make its stars dark;

I will cover the sun with a cloud,

And the moon shall not give her light.

Daniel 7:13 (NKJV)

¹³ “I was watching in the night visions,

And behold, One like the Son of Man,

Coming with the clouds of heaven!

He came to the Ancient of Days,

And they brought Him near before Him.