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.

3. From the Council of Trent concerning original sin:

(a) The entire Adam, through the offense of his prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse. The prevarication of Adam injured not only himself but also his posterity; it transfused not only death and pains of the body into the whole human race but also sin itself, which is the death of the soul (Session 5, numbers 1, 2).

(b) This sin of Adam — which in its origin is one, and being transfused by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his or her own — cannot be taken away by any other remedy than the merit of the one and only Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who reconciled us to God in his own blood, being made justice, sanctification, and redemption for us (Session 5, number 3).

(c) All human beings had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam; they became unclean and by nature children of wrath (Session 6, chapter 1).