This study is part of the study “The Second Coming of Christ“.
However, it gives a complete explanation of Matthew 24: 30 where it says:
They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
ears to hear
Matthew 24:30 (NKJV)
They will see the Son of Man
coming (Erchomai) on the clouds of heaven
with power and great glory.
The Greek word translated coming in Matthew 24:30 is the word erchomai.
Chapter 24 in the book of Matthew teaches us much about the coming of Christ.
Many terms that occur in nature are used in that chapter, such as clouds, lightning, and trumpet blast.
When Jesus says of Himself that He is a door, we understand very well that He is not a real door, but that He means that He is the doorway to the Father.
Similarly, when He talks about sheep, we immediately understand that he is talking about the believers, the people who follow him.
Although not literally, He is after all the Good Shepherd.
When He speaks of clouds, lightning and trumpets however, we often think of literal clouds, lightning and trumpets.
If He meant one literally and the other spiritually, wouldn’t that be very confusing?
Then we really get tangled up with many texts, like the last verse of the chapter, for example:
Matthew 24:51 (NASB)
He will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites.
In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
First of all, it is difficult for a person to gnash his teeth when he is chopped into pieces.
And second, this doesn’t sound like an act of a loving Father if this would happen in the natural.
No, we are not allowed to choose for ourselves what we interpret literally and what we interpret spiritually.
Hebrews 13:8 (NKJV)
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Jesus still communicates the same as He always did, which is by using natural things to teach us the spiritual
So let’s follow the Holy Spirit and pray that we may hear what He is telling us…
Revelation 3:18 (NKJV)
…. and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see.
Revelation 2:17 (NKJV)
He who has an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
the body of Christ
Jesus uses the clouds, which are visible to us in the natural, so that we could understand the spiritual, the invisible.
God often makes His glorious presence known through a cloud throughout the Bible.
This already happened when Israel started the exodus from Egypt:
Exodus 13:21 (NKJV)
The Lord went before them in a pillar of cloud to lead the way.
Later, Moses is instructed by God to build the tabernacle. This tabernacle is a picture of you.
You can learn a lot about your identity as a child of God through this tabernacle.
If you want to learn more about this, please read my study on ‘a new heaven and a new earth‘ and don’t forget to subscribe. 😉
God had said to Moses:
Exodus 25:8 (NLT)
Have the people of Israel build me a holy sanctuary so I can live among them.
All the parts of this sanctuary, the tabernacle, were made by different people and eventually the tabernacle was set up and furnished.
Exodus 40:34 (NLT)
Then the cloud covered the Tabernacle, and the glory of the LORD filled the Tabernacle.
The cloud bears witness to God’s presence in all glory.
He is always protectively present; from the Exodus from Egypt to forever in the Promised Land!
This still applies today, also for us.
Jesus has rescued us from Egypt; from the bondage of sin. The glory of God, Christ in us, leads us to the promised land to conquer and inherit it.
God shows this to us through visible objects and events throughout the Bible.
On the 1st of Nisan, the first day of the first month (Exodus 40:17), the tabernacle was put up for the first time.
The people of Israel, who lived in tents around the tabernacle, were commanded by God to remain where they were as long as the cloud remained over the tabernacle. On the 20th of iar, the 20th day of the second month according to the Jewish calendar, the cloud, and with it the entire nation, starts moving (Numbers 10:11).
This is exactly fifty days after the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God, was built.
But…
Acts 17:24 (NLT)
…the God who made the world and everything in it doesn’t live in man-made temples!
God lives in the temple that He Himself made.
That’s you!
You are the tabernacle where God lives.
1 Corinthians 6:19 (NKJV)
Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?
The natural images of the tabernacle and the cloud therefore have a deep spiritual meaning.
Jesus said:
John 2:19-21 (NKJV)
Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
Then the Jews said, it has taken forty-six years to build this temple,
and will You raise it up in three days?
But He was speaking of the temple of His body.
Remember that these are also natural images to show us the spiritual!
1 Corinthians 12:27 (NLT)
All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.
So you are the body of Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit.
This new temple was built through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
You are this new temple, the temple where God lives, the body of Christ. God does not live in temples made with hands, God lives in you, the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Exactly 50 days after Moses built the tabernacle, the temple that was made by human hands, the cloud, containing the presence and glory of God, began to move.
Now that the cloud was moving, the people were also allowed to move.
The cloud led the people to the promised land and the people followed the cloud.
In the New Testament we see the spiritual fulfilment of this image. Just before Jesus is lifted up to heaven, He tells His disciples to stay in Jerusalem.
Acts 1:4 (NLT)
Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before.
They do what Jesus commanded and…
Acts 2:1 (GWT)
…when Pentecost, the fiftieth day after Passover, came,
all the believers were together in one place.
Suddenly, a sound like a violently blowing wind came from the sky
and filled the whole house where they were staying.
Exactly fifty days after the temple that was not made by man was built, the Holy Spirit, the glory of God, came upon man.
Man, as the tabernacle of God, was covered by the cloud of God and filled with His glory!
Exactly fifty days after Moses set up the tabernacle, the cloud moved and only then were the people allowed to move.
(Exodus 40:34 the cloud covered the Tabernacle, and the glory of the LORD filled the Tabernacle)
Jesus personally instructed His disciples not to move until God moved. Fifty days after the temple was erected, which was not man-made, they were allowed to move. Just as the cloud led the people of God to the promised land, so the Holy Spirit leads you to the promised land.
coming with clouds
Hebrews 1:1-3 (NASB)
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways,
in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things.
And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.
The glory of God in His Son became visible in Jesus when He took Peter, John and James up a mountain.
Matthew 17:2,3,5 (NLT)
Jesus’ appearance changed in front of them.
His face became as bright as the sun and his clothes as white as light.
Suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared to them and were talking with Jesus.
He was still speaking when a bright cloud overshadowed them.
Then a voice came out of the cloud and said,
this is my Son, whom I love and with whom I am pleased. Listen to him!
On Mount Sinai, God had spoken to Moses from the cloud.
Exodus 24:15 (NKJV)
Moses went up into the mountain, and a cloud covered the mountain.
Now the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai.
And now God has spoken to us through the Son, who is the radiance of His glory.
We see the cloud again later when Jesus is lifted up to heaven.
Acts 1:9-11 (NASB)
He was lifted up while they were looking on,
and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going,
behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them.
They also said, men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky?
This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven,
will come (Erchomai) in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.
Jesus is glorified. He is completely absorbed in the cloud, in the cloud of the full glory of the Father.
About 60 years later, the apostle John was exiled to the island of Patmos.
There, on that island, the Holy Spirit shows him what those men in white clothing meant by “you shall see Him coming in just the same way as you have seen Him go to heaven.”
And as the visions began to unfold, John cried out in great amazement and with great joy:
Revelation 1:7 (NKJV)
Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him!
(Ιδου) idou is the Greek word here translated ‘behold’. The word means that we must pay close attention, along the lines of: Pay attention!, Listen carefully! Idou is used when an event is described that seems impossible, but will happen anyway. “Behold, He is coming…..”.
He is coming, the Greek erchomai, here, is present participle, so it is a coming that is already happening. So the two men in white said to the disciples, “As you have now seen Him go to heaven, likewise He coming right now!”
The general thinking is that Christ came 2,000 years ago and that He will come again later, at the end of the world.
But His coming is in the eternal now.
His coming is in you, as the temple of the Spirit of Christ, wherein He comes from glory to glory (2Cor.3:18).
Erchomai means that He makes Himself known in us and clearly visible to everyone around us.
Erchomai means: coming in the sense of appearing to the general public.
Thus Jesus appeared to Israel 2,000 years ago.
Thus He now appears as the fullness of Christ in His own body; the church.
So first the Son reveals Himself in secret, within you. As with Paul:
Galatians 1:16
It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.
In this way you get to know God, the Father, and in this way you get to know the Son; yourself.
It’s…
Ephesians 4:12-13 (YLT)
…for a building up of the body of the Christ,
till we may all come to the unity of the faith
and of the recognition of the Son of God,
to a perfect man,
to a measure of stature of the fulness of the Christ.
These sons of God are then revealed as the fullness of Christ to the general public, to all creation.
This revelation so affected John that he exclaimed:
Behold, Idou! He is coming….! Erchomai! And every eye will see Him!
Romans 8:19 (NASB)
For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly
for the revealing of the sons of God!
Clouds & rain
The clouds in the Bible have a deep meaning.
In the clouds dwells the glory and majesty of the Creator of the heavens and the earth.
The secret of the meaning of the clouds lies in their function:
Clouds retain water and distribute it over the earth.
Now throughout the Bible you see one as opposed to another.
For example the goats against the sheep, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil against the tree of life and Babylon against the New Jerusalem.
It is the earthly, earthly wisdom, the mind of the flesh versus the heavenly, the wisdom of God.
With the clouds and also the water you see this same image.
Already on the second day of creation, God separates water from water.
Genesis 1:6-10 (NKJV)
God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters
and let it divide the waters from the waters.
Thus God made the firmament
and divided the waters which were under the firmament
from the waters which were above the firmament.
And God called the firmament Heaven.
Then God said, let the waters under the heavens
be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.
And God called the dry land Earth,
and the gathering together of the waters He called Sea.
The second day of creation is the only day that does not say that God saw that it was good.
On that day, God separates water from water by placing a firmament between them.
This firmament He calls heaven.
On the fourth day, God makes the sun, moon, and stars and places them in this firmament.
We now see the image emerging of water above the heavens and water on the earth, below the heavens.
This water on earth He calls sea.
Water is an image of the Word. It is a picture of what is being said.
The water above the firmament is the Word of God; the Wisdom of God.
The water under the firmament is what man says; earthly wisdom.
Jesus is the water from above the firmament.
He came to the earth to make the water under the firmament the same water as the water above the firmament.
Look:
John 1:1,4,14 (NKJV)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 4:14 (NKJV)
Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst!
But the water that I shall give him
will become in him a fountain of water
springing up into everlasting life.
Jesus is the Word of God, the Wisdom of God, the water from above the firmament.
He came to earth as a man so that we can see the glory of God in the only begotten son of God.
This only begotten son of God is the Christ. Jesus is the head of the Christ and we are the body of the Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:27 (NLT)
All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it!
Jesus came to tell us the truth of God.
When you drink this truth, it will become a well within you. Then, everything that is in Him is also formed in you; His body.
In this way it will be on earth as it is in heaven.
In this way we are being equipped for the work of ministry…
Ephesians 4:12-13 (YLT)
…for a building up of the body of the Christ,
till we may all come to the unity of the faith
and of the recognition of the Son of God,
to a perfect man,
to a measure of stature of the fulness of the Christ.
In this way the whole earth is filled with the glory of the Lord.
Numbers 14:21 (NKJV)
All the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord!
In this way arises what John had already seen in the spirit:
Revelation 21:1 (NKJV)
Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth,
for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.
Also there was no more sea.
The sea, the water under the firmament, the earthly wisdom, is no longer there.
It has become one with the water above the firmament, the truth of God.
Of course there are those who do not accept the truth from God or twist the truth into a lie.
2 Peter 2:17 (NKJV)
These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest.
These people are clouds that fall short of their goal.
They do not retain water and do not irrigate the earth so that it can bear fruit.
Be therefore irrigated with the water from above the firmament so that this water becomes a source of living water within you.
You then become a cloud filled with the water of truth. A cloud on which Christ has come to earth.
Revelation 1:7 (NKJV)
Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him!
You, along with all believers, are the clouds on which Jesus comes.
Our hope therefore is not that Jesus will some day return, Christ within you is the hope of glory!
Colossians 1:27b (NKJV)
Christ in you, the hope of glory!
Matthew 24:23 (NKJV)
Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it!
For every eye will see Him…
2 Thessalonians 1:10-11 (TMB)
…when He shall come on that Day to be glorified in His saints
and to be admired in all those who believe.
Therefore also we pray always for you,
that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you,
and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Revelation 22:20 (NASB)
He who testifies to these things says,
yes, I am coming quickly!
Come, Lord Jesus!
