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.

22. Brief Analysis

Books on ecclesiastical history make it clear that the four points just mentioned, as they are taught in the Protestant churches today, are not new. They were not invented by these three reformers. Instead, they had come into existence as early as the time of the Council of Nicaea and had been passed down by writers after that; they have been preserved as part of the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church.

The reason why Roman Catholics and Protestants agree concerning the trinity of persons in the Divine is that they both recognize the three [ecumenical] creeds in which this concept of a trinity is taught: the Apostles’ Creed; the Nicene Creed; and the Athanasian Creed.

As for the notion that Christ’s merit is assigned to us, the material gathered above in §§3– 8 from the Council of Trent and in §§10– 15 from the Formula of Concord makes it clear that they agree on this point as well.

As for the point about how we are justified, this will now be taken up for further discussion.