Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today's reading has a lot in common with yesterday's reading. We recap the first half yesterday,

so today we'll zoom in on the second half. I mentioned this yesterday,

but it bears repeating. One of the things that helps me through passages like these is to look at

what parts are information and what parts are instruction. To figure out which is which,

you can ask yourself questions like, is Jesus telling me something God is going to do or something

the disciples are supposed to do or something I am supposed to do. If he's telling us what God is doing or what the disciples are supposed to do or something I am supposed to do.

If he's telling us what God is doing or what the disciples were supposed to do, it's information.

If he's telling us what we're supposed to do, it's instruction.

But just a heads up, sometimes there is a clear or implied overlap of information and instruction.

This is the final week of his life, and Jesus is talking to his inner

circle, plus Andrew, on the Mount of Olives, just outside the gates of Jerusalem. He tells them

about how the temple will be destroyed and Jerusalem will fall to Rome. He tells them about lots of

trials and struggles they'll endure. And so far it seems like he's kind of working in chronological order.

Thanks, Jesus. As a reminder, one of the names for the Messiah is Son of Man. So when Jesus dives into this topic, he's talking about his return to earth after his death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven. So while it's possible that everything up to that point has already happened, this is something we're still waiting for. He pulls back the curtain a bit on what

will happen, but there's still a glare on the window, so we can't really expect to see things

clearly just yet. We may have ideas, we may have hints, but none of us know the full

details on all of this. There are a few major perspectives on this, and I've tried reading the

past just through the various lenses of those different opinions, and I can truly see how each perspective has its own strengths.

This is one of the many places where it's wise to hold things with an open hand.

Because, as always, we don't scream where scripture whispers, and we don't whisper where scripture screams.

So now that we've got that out of the way, what's going to happen?

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