68. As for evidence that the modern-day church believes there is no bond uniting goodwill and faith, this is found in the following statements from its teachings regarding justification: Faith is attributed to us as righteousness apart from the works we do; see §12 a. Faith actually does not make us just if it has been formed through acts of goodwill; see §12 b. Good works must be completely excluded from any discussion of our justification and eternal life; see §12f. Good works are not necessary for our salvation; any assertion that they are necessary should be clearly rejected by the church; see §12 g, h, i, j. Our salvation and our faith are not preserved or maintained by goodwill or its works; see §12 l, m. Good works that are mixed up in the business of our being justified are harmful; see §14 g. The works of the spirit or of grace that follow faith as its fruits contribute nothing to our salvation; see §14 d and elsewhere [§§11 b, 13 w].

The inescapable conclusion from all these points is there is no bond between goodwill and that kind of faith; if there were such a bond, it would be harmful to our salvation because it would be harmful to our faith, since our faith would no longer be the sole source of our salvation.

As I have shown above in §§47, 48, 49, 50, it is actually true that that faith is incapable of being united to goodwill. Therefore one could say that it is a matter of foresight and predestination that Protestants tossed goodwill and good works so far away from their faith.

If Protestants had paired their faith with goodwill, it would have been like pairing a leopard with a sheep, a wolf with a lamb, or a hawk with a turtledove. (That faith is in fact described as a leopard in the Book of Revelation; see Revelation 13:2 and the explanation of that verse in Revelation Unveiled 572.)

What is a church without faith? What is faith without goodwill? What is a church, then, if it does not recognize the marriage that exists between faith and goodwill (see §48 above)? This marriage is the church itself; it is the new church that is now being established by the Lord.

73. The statements in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 and Luke 21, which are similar to each other, are not describing the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple; they are describing the successive changes of state the Christian church will go through in sequence, even to its final state, when it comes to an end. This will become clear in the work itself, where these chapters in Scripture will be explained.

In the meantime, the truth of this should be clear from the statements in the Gospels just mentioned:

Then the sign of the Son of Humankind will appear and all the tribes of the earth will wail. They will see the Son of Humankind coming in the clouds of heaven with power and glory. He will send out his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather his chosen people from one end of the heavens to the other. (Matthew 24:30, 31; Mark 13:26, 27; Luke 21:27)

As we all know, things like these were not heard or seen in Jerusalem when it was destroyed; today people believe they will occur instead at the time of the Last Judgment.

We read similar things in the Book of Revelation, which from beginning to end treats exclusively of the final state of the church:

Behold, Jesus Christ is coming in the clouds, and all the tribes of the earth will wail over him. (Revelation 1:5, 7)

For an explanation of each of these expressions, see Revelation Unveiled 24– 28. For what the tribes of the earth and their wailing means, see Revelation Unveiled 27, 348, 349.