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Jesus talked about the way everything will finish up
1 Jesus and his followers started to leave God’s ceremony house, and as they walked along, one of them said, “Teacher, look at these lovely buildings. And look at these big stones. This is a really good house that they made for God.”
2 Jesus said, “You see these lovely big buildings? One day, these buildings will not be here. Somebody will knock them all down. They will just be a big pile of rubbish.”
3 Then Jesus and his followers went out of Jerusalem, and they sat down on the hill called Olive Trees Hill. They could see God’s ceremony house from there. Peter, James, John and Andrew talked quietly to Jesus. They asked him,
4 “When will somebody knock that building down? Will there be something to show us that it will soon happen?”
5 Jesus said, “Listen, you have to be careful. Don’t let anybody trick you.
6 A lot of people will come and say, ‘I’m Jesus Christ, the man that God sent,’ and they will trick a lot of people.
7 You will hear stories about big fights, and somebody might tell you stories about big fights that will happen later. Don’t let those stories frighten you. Those fights will happen, but the world will not finish up yet.
8 There will be a lot more fights. People from some tribes will get up and fight against people from other tribes, and people from some nations will get up and fight against people from other nations. And in lots of different places the ground will shake in earthquakes. And sometimes there will not be any food, and people will be really hungry. These bad things will happen, and after that, more big trouble will come. You know about women, when they have babies. At first a woman has some pain, then later her pain gets really bad. Well, the trouble I just told you about is like the first pain for a mother, and after that, the trouble will get really bad.
9 You have to watch out. You see, you follow me, but some people don’t like me, so they will not like you. They will grab you and take you to their leaders, and they will punish you. And people will beat you up in their meeting houses. They will take you to court, so that you will stand up in front of big leaders and big government bosses. Then you can tell everyone about me.
10 You see, people everywhere will hear about me. The people in every nation will hear the good news about me, and some time after that, the world will finish up.
11 Yes, people will grab you to take you to court. But before you get there, don’t worry about what you will say to the judge. The Holy Spirit will give you the right words to say, so just talk the way the Holy Spirit tells you to.
12 You see, there is going to be so much trouble that people will fight their own families. Some men will turn against their own brothers, and they will get people to kill them. And some fathers will do that to their own kids. And some kids will turn against their mothers and fathers and get people to kill them.
13 And everybody will know that you follow me, so they will hate you. But if you stay strong and don’t give up, God will save you.”
14 Then Jesus said, “Somebody will put a really bad thing inside God’s ceremony house. That bad thing ruins everything around it, so it shouldn’t be in God’s house. It will bring a lot of trouble.” (Everyone that reads this story has to try hard to understand what it means.) And Jesus said, “When you see that happen, you mob that live in Judea country, you have to quickly run away to the hill country.
15 If you are outside your house, don’t go back into it to get anything.
16 Or if you are out working somewhere, don’t go back to your house to get something, not even your coat. Just run away quick.
17 It will be hard for women that are carrying babies inside them, and for mothers with little kids at that time.
18 You have to ask God to stop this trouble from coming at the time when the weather is bad and it’s hard to go anywhere.
19 This trouble will give people really bad pain. People never had bad pain like that before, not in all the time since God made everything. And nothing that bad will ever happen again.
20 You see, if God lets that trouble keep on going, everybody will die. But God has picked out some people, and he doesn’t want them to die, so after a short time he will stop that trouble so that they will not die.
21 Don’t believe people that say, ‘We have found the Christ, the special man from God. Here he is.’ Or if they say, ‘There he is over there,’ don’t believe them.
22 There will be a lot of people that will tell lies and try to trick you. Some people will say that they are the Christ, the special man from God. Other people will say that they are telling people God’s words, and they might do all sorts of clever things. Those people will be thinking, ‘Maybe we can trick the people that God picked out for himself.’ But really, they can’t do that.
23 So keep on being careful. You see, I’m telling you about it now, so that later, when it happens, you can be ready for it.
24 After that time of trouble, things will happen that God tells us about in his book. He says,
‘The sun will go dark, and the moon will stop shining.
25 The stars and the other powerful things in the sky will all shake about and fall out of the sky.’
26 Then everybody will see God’s special man come back from heaven in the clouds. People will see that he is really strong, and powerful, and shining really bright.
27 Then he will send God’s angel messengers out to every place in the world. They will not miss any place, anywhere. They will get all the people that belong to God. He picked out those people for himself. The angels will bring all those people to God.
28 Think about this. Whenever you see new leaves on a bush tucker tree, you know that the weather’s going to change soon. Those new leaves show you that.
29 It’s the same with all these things that I’m telling you about now, they will show you something too. You will see these things happen, and you will know that I will come really soon.
30 Listen, there are some people alive now that will still be alive when these things happen.
31 One day, everything will finish up. The sky, and the ground, and everything, it will all finish up, but not my words. My words stay true for ever. They will never finish up.”
Stay awake and keep on looking out
32 Then Jesus said, “I’m telling you straight. Nobody knows the time when God will do these things. Nobody knows what day it will be, or what the time will be on the clock. God’s angel messengers in heaven don’t know. Even I don’t know. My father in heaven is the only one that knows.
33 You don’t know what time God will do these things, so you have to always be ready and keep on remembering everything I told you, like you have to stay awake and keep on looking out for me.
34 Listen to this picture story. A man wanted to go to stay in another place for a while, so he told his workers to look after everything at his house while he was away. He told each one of them to do their own jobs. He said to the guard at the gate, ‘Keep looking out to see me coming back.’
35-36 Those workers didn’t know what time that boss was going to come home. He might come after the sun goes down, or he might come in the middle of the night, or he might come as the birds call out in the morning, or he might come back after the sun comes up. So those workers have to be ready all the time. You are like those workers in that picture story, and I am like that boss. You don’t know what time I will come back here, and you have to be ready for me all the time. So you have to keep on looking out for me, like that guard at the gate has to keep on looking out. Don’t get lazy.
37 I’m telling you mob to be careful, like I tell everybody else. You’ve got to always be ready for me to come.”