Immediate Signs: Lightning — Part 2

In this series, The Great Commission and Biblical Prophecy, we’re considering Jesus’ prophecy about the temple’s destruction (Matt 24:1–2), the disciples’ questions regarding the timing and the signs related to it (Matt 24:3), and Jesus’ response to their questions. We’re in the section where the Lord gives the signs (Matt 24:4–31), and have made our way to the signs directly linked to God’s destruction of the temple (Matt 24:27–31). This is the second post dealing with his lightning sign: “As the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matt 24:27).

Isaiah’s Prophecy of the Second Temple’s Destruction

Isaiah wrote a passage (Isa 29:1–16) that helps us understand Jesus’ lightning imagery in the Olivet Discourse. John Gill says it is a prophecy of the same “great tribulation” of which Jesus is speaking in the Olivet Discourse: “This chapter contains a prophecy concerning the temple’s destruction and city of Jerusalem by the Romans.”¹

I agree with Gill because this prophecy matches Jesus’ prophecy in the Olivet Discourse and the historical record of what happened when the temple fell. This agreement includes the following facts: 

1. An army would surround Jerusalem (Isa 29:3; cp. Luke 21:20).
2. Jerusalem would fall to the ground (Isa 29:4; cp. Matt 24:1–2).
3. Destruction would come in an instant (Isa 29:5).
4. Punishment would come with the thunder that follows lightning (Isa 29:6; cp. Matt 24:27).
5. Fire would devour Jerusalem (Isa 29:6; cp. the “scorched earth” tactics of the Romans).
6. Israel would be in a deep sleep (Isa 29:10; cp. Rom 11:8).
7. Israel was drawing near to God with their mouths, but not their hearts (Isa 29:13; cp. Matt 15:7–9).
8. The wisdom of Israel’s wise men would perish (Isa 29:14; cp. 1 Cor 1:19–24).
9. Israel, like a clay pot from the hand of God, would argue with its maker (Isa 29:16; cp. Rom 9:19–21). 

That all these elements were present in Jesus’ generation suggests that Isaiah was speaking about the same judgment He describes in the Olivet Discourse.

This observation allows me to make the same points I made earlier: God would be present when this judgment happened—“I will encamp against you … and I will raise siegeworks against you” (Isa 29:3). Yet the inhabitants of Jerusalem would not see God with their naked eyes; they would see His agents—the Roman armies. Isaiah used thunder—the result of lightning—to emphasize God’s presence and the severity of the coming judgment, but this does not mean Jerusalem would hear a literal thunderclap. 

Jesus uses the same cluster of images as Isiah to describe the coming judgment on the temple.

The Song of Moses

In a previous post, I used the Song of Moses (Deut 32:1–43) to explain why Jesus referred to the “great tribulation” as the “days of vengeance.” Now, it will help me explain His lightning sign. 

God used lightning imagery in the music he wrote to accompany His future latter-day judgment of Israel: “I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me” (Deut 32:41 ESV). Here, “‘my flashing sword’ is in Hebrew ‘the lightning of my sword.’”² God was saying, “I will sharpen my dagger like lightning”³ against apostate Israel.

The Song of Moses described the same judgment Jesus now predicts in the Olivet Discourse. I have already made the case for this, but here is one more piece of evidence: before Moses gave the Song, he said, “The LORD has not given you a heart to perceive, eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this very day” (Deut 29:4). 

This rebuke is not about Israel’s inability to perceive literal (i.e., physical) events, including lightning. It’s about their lack of discernment regarding God’s redemptive acts. Moses said this condition would continue: “I know that after my death you will become utterly corrupt … and evil will befall you in the latter days, because you will do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands” (Deut 31:29). 

In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus is echoing Moses’ Song: Israel’s “latter days” had arrived, and the end of the Mosaic age was at hand (Matt 24:1–3; cp. 1 Cor 10:11). Israel still had the sight problem Moses identified: “Seeing they do not see.… Their eyes they have closed” (Matt 13:13, 15; cp. Deut 29:4). Jesus joins Moses in foretelling the lightning-like judgment that would fall on the temple because of this blindness (Matt 24:27; cp. Deut 32:41).

Neither Moses nor Jesus meant the Jews would see literal lightning or God’s presence (i.e., His parousia) with their natural eyes. When the temple fell, they would see Him use His lightning sword—the Roman armies—to destroy the temple. They would “see” the parousia (presence) of the Son of Man in the historical events that unfolded around them. Most of them would remain blind until death.

Kernel of Literal Truth

I mentioned earlier (here) that prophetic images often have a kernel of literal truth. Tacitus, the Roman historian, confirms this is true of Jesus’ lightning imagery in his description of the temple’s destruction:

In the sky appeared a vision of armies in conflict, of glittering armour. A sudden lightning flash from the clouds lit up the temple. The doors of the holy place abruptly opened, a superhuman voice was heard to declare that the gods were leaving it, and in the same instant came the rushing tumult of their departure. Few people placed a sinister interpretation upon this. The majority were convinced that the ancient scriptures of their priests alluded to the present as the very time when the Orient would triumph and from Judaea would go forth men destined to rule the world.⁴

The literal lightning on this occasion did not fulfill Jesus’ sign; his imagery described the judgment-presence of the Son of Man during the temple’s fall. But the literal lightning that accompanied that event made the sign even more impressive.

Summary

Before giving the Olivet Discourse, Jesus had used lightning to describe the coming of the kingdom of God: 

“The kingdom of God does not come with observation.… For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven shines to the other part under heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in His day” (Luke 17:20, 24). David Brown says,

When the whole polity of the Jews, civil and ecclesiastical alike, was broken up at once, and its continuance rendered impossible by the destruction of Jerusalem, it became as manifest to all as the lightning of heaven that the kingdom of God had ceased to exist in its old, and had entered on a new and perfectly different form.⁵

The lightning, the Son of Man, and the kingdom of God were not coming “with signs to be observed” (Luke 17:24 NASB), but they were coming. The disciples understood this: a few weeks after the Olivet Discourse, Stephen stood trial for saying, “This Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place and alter the customs which Moses handed down” (Acts 6:14).

In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus uses lightning imagery just as the prophets had before him: to signify God’s presence—now, the presence (parousia) of Christ—when he would execute his vengeance judgment on Jerusalem and the temple.

1. John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 9 vols. (1809–10; repr., Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 5:163.
2. Earl S. Kalland, “Deuteronomy,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 215 (emphasis added). Cp. the ESV marginal note: “the lightning of my sword.”
3. Rick Brannan et al., eds., The Lexham English Septuagint (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), Deut 32:41.
4. Tacitus, The Histories, ed. Betty Radice, trans. Kenneth Wellesley (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), 287–88 (5.13) (emphasis added).
5. Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A Commentary, Critical, Experimental and Practical on the Old and New Testaments, 3 vols. (n.d.; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 3.1:300 (commentary on Luke 17:24) (emphasis added).