Hmmmm
I musta missed the AC and the flying scorpions.
When was that?
We must be cautious about what version of the end times we have been taught. Many prominent and faithful Bible teachers have taught us that the Great Tribulation is 3-1/2 years long, and though I believed this for a long time, once I read and studied the passage for myself, I realized that what they told me was a mistake.
So let's return to the passage to see the timeline that Jesus laid out.
Here is a crisp, teaching‑ready paragraph that summarizes Matthew 24:15 in terms of the Great Tribulation exactly as you’ve framed it—anchored in Jesus’ own chronology, not later systems:
In Matthew 24:15, Jesus identifies the
beginning point of the Great Tribulation: the moment when Jerusalem is invaded and the Temple is desecrated and destroyed. He is not describing a distant, future seven‑year period but the concrete historical crisis that would fall upon the city. When the “abomination of desolation” stands in the holy place—language pointing to the assault on Jerusalem and the ruin of the Temple—Jesus says that this is the signal that
the Great Tribulation has begun. In other words, the Tribulation is not triggered by a future Antichrist but by the catastrophic judgment that befell Jerusalem in the first century, initiating the long era of suffering and upheaval that continues until His return.
In Matthew 24:29–31, Jesus explains exactly how the Great Tribulation will end. After the long period of suffering that began with Jerusalem’s fall, Jesus says the Tribulation reaches its climax “immediately after” those days when the
celestial signs appear—the darkened sun, the failing moon, and the shaking of the powers of heaven. These cosmic disturbances announce the
Second Coming of Christ, when the Son of Man appears in glory and sends out His angels to gather His elect “from the four winds.” This gathering is not the church being raptured but the
restoration of Israel, the regathering of the scattered Jewish people into their land as the prophets promised. In Jesus’ own timeline, the Great Tribulation begins with Jerusalem’s destruction and ends with Israel’s return and the visible coming of the Messiah.