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“…then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn” - Matthew 24:30.
When Jesus’ disciples asked Him what would be the sign of His second coming, their request was answered and the gospel of Matthew records the Lord’s response. One of those signs will be the appearance of the “sign of the Son of Man,” the sign which would trigger a mourning among all the tribes, or peoples of the earth: “…then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn” (Matthew 24:30). This sign precedes the second coming and follows the great tribulation, a time of unprecedented natural disasters and war, which includes a second captivity of Israel as recorded in Zechariah’s chapter fourteen, verses one and two.
The great tribulation is preceded by an apostasy, a falling away and rejection of the Christian faith: specifically the refusal of the world to accept Jesus as the true messiah. Therefore when His “sign” appears in the heavens, all the world will know that it represents the Messiah Jesus that they have wantonly rejected. Most likely that sign will be the cross, the universally recognized symbol of Christianity.
Among the mourners of the world who have recognized the true meaning of that sign in the sky, will be the Jewish people, the lineage through which the Messiah Jesus was birthed. This time of their mourning is prophesied in Zechariah. –
And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn (Zechariah 12:10).
As the cross is hovering in the sky above their heads, the realization of the truth they have rejected produces a great mourning as they recognize their rejection of the true messiah was also a rejection of the God they professed to worship. – “They shall look upon Me…” (The Messiah Jesus was always the image of the Father (Genesis 18, John 14:9) “…and mourn for him,” the Messiah they had refused.
Their mourning produces the repentance and acceptance of the truth that opens the floodgates of God’s forgiveness upon the figurative “mother” of His Son. It is at this moment that all Israel will be saved.
I can imagine them hearing Jesus speak to them the words of comfort that Joseph spoke to his brethren who had rejected him and caused him so much anguish. –
Now therefore be not grieved, not angry with yourselves, that you have sold me here: for God did send me before you to preserve life (Genesis 45:5).
And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance (Genesis 45:7).
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16).
The great mourning that will come upon this world will contain the cries of repentance from those who receive the Lord, and the anguished wailing from those who have reviled Him and are merely weeping for the loss of their own evil objectives. The cross that they tried to eradicate from the earth, and the salvation it represents, now shines far beyond their reach; the unmovable symbol of life for believers and the sign of death and destruction for all those who have sought to destroy the Christian faith.
It will be a very great mourning.
Copyright 2021 by H. D. Shively
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