The last thing Jesus said to Jerusalem was not a curse. It was a condition — with the word “till” sitting in the middle of it.
Every serious believer watching the Middle East is asking the same question in some form. What has to happen before he comes back?
There is no shortage of people willing to answer with a chart and a calendar. But Jesus answered it himself, once, in a single sentence, on his way out of the temple for the last time. He named a condition. And almost nobody preaches it.
Walking out of the temple for the last time
Matthew 23 is the hardest chapter Jesus ever spoke. Seven woes. The whitewashed tombs. The cup clean on the outside. He is finished with the religious leadership of his nation, and he says so in language that leaves no room to negotiate.
And then, at the very end, the tone breaks:
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. (Matthew 23:37–39, KJV)
Then he walked out. The next verse begins, “And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple.” Everything after that in Matthew is spoken on a hillside to his disciples, or in a courtroom, or on a cross. Those three verses are his last public word to the city.
There are three things in them, and they go in order: a grief, a verdict, and a condition.
The grief: “ye would not”
Do not rush past the hen.
It is the gentlest picture in the chapter and it is placed deliberately against the hardest words in the chapter. A hen covering chicks is not a picture of power. It is a picture of a body put between danger and something small. It is what he would be doing by Friday.
And “how often” tells you this was not one offer. It was centuries of them — prophet after prophet, warning after warning, patience stretched out over generations.
Then four words that carry the whole weight: and ye would not. Not could not. Not were not permitted. Would not. A settled refusal, freely made, over a long time.
The verdict: a house left empty
“Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.”
Notice the pronoun shift. Through the whole Old Testament it is my house — “mine house shall be called an house of prayer.” Two days before this, standing in that same building, he had used that very phrase. Now it is your house. He is handing it back.
“Desolate” in the King James means emptied, abandoned, left without its occupant. The building stood for another forty years. It was busy. Sacrifices continued, crowds came, the courts filled at Passover. And it was desolate from the afternoon he walked out of it, because the thing that made it a temple had left on foot through the gate.
A religious institution can run for four decades on momentum after the glory has gone. That is worth a long, quiet thought about more than first-century Jerusalem.
The condition: the word “till”
Now the sentence that should change how you read a newspaper.
“Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
“Till” is a terminus. It is a word that limits whatever came before it. Desolation is real and desolation has an end date, and the end date is not a year — it is a sentence coming out of Jerusalem’s mouth.
This is one of the great overlooked structures of biblical prophecy: God repeatedly attaches an until to Israel’s judgment rather than a period. Jerusalem trodden down until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. Blindness in part until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. Every one of those words is a door, not a wall. Matthew 23:39 is the same door, and Jesus is the one holding it.
What exactly do they have to say?
He does not leave it vague. He quotes them a line they all knew by heart:
Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the LORD: we have blessed you out of the house of the LORD. (Psalm 118:26, KJV)
Psalm 118 is the last of the Hallel psalms, sung at Passover. Every pilgrim in that city had it in his mouth that week. And five days earlier, when he rode in over the garments and the branches, that is precisely what the crowd shouted at him.
So why is he still waiting for it?
Because the crowd that shouted it was largely pilgrims, and the city itself did not. By Friday the voices from Jerusalem were asking for Barabbas. The words were said near him and about him; they were not said by the city, over him, as her king. He is telling them: the welcome I came for has not happened yet. And it will.
Zechariah tells you what that day looks like from the inside — and it is not a parade:
And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son. (Zechariah 12:10, KJV)
That is the “saying” of Matthew 23:39 with its face shown. Not a political endorsement. A recognition — and grief. Paul says the same thing in one line: “And so all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:26, KJV).
How this should and should not change your news habits
Here is where I want to be careful, because this is exactly the place where prophecy teaching goes bad.
What Matthew 23:39 gives you is a sequence, not a schedule. It tells you the character of the moment Israel’s national blindness ends. It tells you that moment has not happened yet. It gives you no date, no window, and no permission to run arithmetic on any current event.
What it does legitimately do is this. A condition that requires Jerusalem to speak requires a Jerusalem with Jewish inhabitants in it to do the speaking. For most of church history that was not the case, and faithful men read these verses as something they would never watch. That has changed within living memory, and a believer is not being sensational to notice it. Noticing that the pieces are on the board is sober. Announcing the hour is not.
And keep two comings distinct in your thinking. The catching away of the church — “the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout” (1 Thessalonians 4:16, KJV) — is held out as something that may happen at any moment, with no prerequisite announced anywhere. The public appearing, feet on the Mount of Olives, is the one Matthew 23:39 attaches a condition to. Blur those two and you will either stop watching or start setting dates, and both are errors.
The two words that are not about Israel at all
Go back to verse 37, because there is a knife in it with your name on the handle.
Ye would not.
The temple did not go desolate over a doctrinal error or a political miscalculation. It went desolate because wings were spread and a people declined to come under them. How often. And ye would not.
Some of you have been declining for years with excellent manners. You have not denied anything. You go to church. You own four Bibles. You can discuss the end times with real competence. And the gathering has been offered to you, repeatedly, for a long time, and you have kept it at the level of discussion.
Hear this clearly: you do not have to wait for a nation to say the sentence. The sentence is available this morning, from your own mouth, with nobody else present.
For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Romans 10:13, KJV)
Whosoever. Not whichever nation, on the appointed day — whosoever, now.
He left the door open on his way out
Think about what it cost him to put that condition in that form.
He could have said, “Ye shall not see me henceforth.” Full stop. That would have been just. He had been refused by the city he wept over, and he was walking to a cross its leaders had arranged.
Instead the last sentence he speaks to Jerusalem is a sentence with a future in it. He tells them the exact words that will end their desolation — and they are words of blessing on him. He hands them, on the way out, the very confession that will bring him back.
That is who you are dealing with. He does not slam doors. He names the handle.
One day a city will say it and mean it, and the sky will open. Until then, the question on the table is smaller and far more urgent: have you said it?
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist