PASTORS, PLEASE STOP MISUSING “NO MAN KNOWS THE DAY OR HOUR”

PASTORS, PLEASE STOP MISUSING “NO MAN KNOWS THE DAY OR HOUR”:

Matthew 24:36 says:

“But of that day and hour knows no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”

That verse gets thrown around constantly whenever the rapture comes up. Someone starts talking about the catching away of the Church, and right away somebody says, “Well, no man knows the day or hour.”

Amen. The verse is true.

But please stop using it out of context.

Matthew 24 is not Paul’s rapture doctrine. Matthew 24 is the Olivet Discourse. Jesus is answering questions about the temple, His coming, and the end of the age.

Matthew 24:3 gives the frame:

“Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?”

That chapter is filled with tribulation and Second Coming language. Jesus talks about the abomination of desolation, Judaea fleeing, the Sabbath, great tribulation, false christs, cosmic signs, the Son of man coming in the clouds, and angels gathering the elect.

That is not the same scene Paul gives in 1 Thessalonians 4, where the Lord descends, the dead in Christ rise, and believers are caught up together to meet the Lord in the air.

Matthew 24 is public, visible, judgment-connected, and tied to Israel, Jerusalem, and the tribulation.

The rapture is the blessed hope of the Church.

Now someone may say, “But the Second Coming is seven years after the covenant in Daniel 9, so wouldn’t they know the day?”

Not exactly.

Daniel gives the prophetic structure of the final week. The covenant is confirmed for one week. In the middle of the week, sacrifice and offering cease. That gives the framework.

But Jesus still said no one knows the day or hour.

That means the tribulation generation will be able to know the season. They will know the signs. They will know the abomination of desolation marks the final half. They will know they are near when they see the things Jesus described.

But the exact day and hour of His appearing still belongs to the Father.

Matthew 24:22 even says those days will be shortened for the elect’s sake. Daniel 12 also gives additional day counts of 1,290 and 1,335 days, which shows there are details around the close of that period that are more layered than simply saying, “Start the stopwatch and circle the date.”

And then people bring up the other part of the verse:

“No man knows… no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”

Some will say, “See, Jesus didn’t know. Only the Father knew.”

Be careful with that argument.

Jesus is not a created being. He is not less than the Father in deity. He is God the Son in human flesh.

John 1:1 says:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Colossians 2:9 says:

“For in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”

So Matthew 24:36 cannot mean Jesus stopped being God or lacked divine nature.

It means that in His earthly ministry, the Son lived in perfect submission to the Father. He humbled Himself, took on true humanity, and functioned according to the Father’s will.

Philippians 2:7 says He “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant.”

That is the key.

Jesus did not cease to be God. He did not become less divine. He voluntarily entered real humanity and did not operate independently from the Father’s appointed will.

The same Jesus who said that also knew men’s thoughts, told the woman at the well her life, predicted His death and resurrection, described the future destruction of Jerusalem, and laid out the end-time sequence in Matthew 24.

So the issue is not weakness in His deity.

It is submission in His humanity.

The Son was not ignorant like a sinner. He was obedient like the perfect Servant.

Matthew 24:36 belongs in Matthew 24.

It is about the day and hour of the Son of man coming in glory after the tribulation.

Jesus was not telling the Church to ignore the blessed hope. He was not shutting down rapture teaching. He was not saying all prophecy study is pointless. And He definitely was not giving pastors a quick verse to flatten every discussion about the catching away.

The rapture and the Second Coming are connected in God’s prophetic program, but they are not the same event.

One is Christ coming for His Church.

The other is Christ coming with power and great glory to judge the nations, rescue Israel, and establish His kingdom.

So pastors, please handle the verse carefully.

“No man knows the day or hour” is Scripture.

Using it to erase the difference between the rapture and the Second Coming is not.

And using it to deny the deity of Christ is even worse.