Jesus Answers Some Really Deep Questions About Some Really Deep Stuff

Jesus Comments About Past and Future Events Leading Up to His Second Coming

(Luke chapter 17, verses 20–37)

For this week’s installment of my Biblical study series, we’ll be going over the second half of chapter 17 of the Gospel of Luke. When we left off last week at verse 19, Jesus had healed ten men of leprosy while traveling along the border from Samaria to Galilee, which would be in the area roughly 25 miles west of the modern borders where Israel, the West Bank territory and Jordan intersect. As you recall, only one of them bothered to come back and thank Jesus and express his gratitude for his divine healing. “Where are the other nine?”, Jesus had asked, but the man did not know.

We should all take a lesson from this; that we are to maintain an attitude of thankfulness and gratitude for the eternal salvation that has been given to us by the shed blood of Christ Jesus. I also recall charging all my readers to live up to that responsibility, so that on the day we stand before Christ not a single one of us would be found at fault, but that all might be found blameless before Him. I presume everyone is doing that, but if you’re not, you know who you are. Time to tighten up, everybody. Having written all that, let’s take up where we let off last week beginning at verse 20.

“Once, when asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The Kingdom of God does not come by your careful observation, nor will people say, Here it is’, or ‘There it is’, because the kingdom of God is within you.’ Then he said to his disciples, ‘The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, ‘There he is!’, or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.’” (Luke 17, verses 20–25)

“The kingdom of God”, Jesus explained, “is within you”. It is not a physical place we can visit or live in. We cannot buy from it or sell to it. The only thing we can extract from it is also the only thing we need for our eternities — eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, Savior and Kinsman Redeemer. Beyond Jesus, everything else is little more than an afterthought. There is…