End Days - Matthew 24:28 Vultures & Eagles

By Odon Bulamba


We are going to open our Bibles to the book of Mathew 24 and today we are going to talk about verse 28.  Its good to see we are moving forward with Mathew 24 which covers the signs that Jesus left the church to remember His coming back.  The assignment he gave to us is that we must observe those signs and the more we see them, start to prepare ourselves so that we will not have any justification to say that we didn’t know Jesus is coming back soon.


Some to observe will just open their eyes and look at something and stop themselves at that level.  A better observation is to also stop and think about it and then pull out all that is positive and all that is negative and ask yourselves, what do I need from what I have observed and how is it going to help me and my people.  We need to observe because what we are facing soon is the return of Jesus.  It will be only once.  You will either make it or miss it and it will be for eternity, there will not be a second chance.  You can’t try again.  You will either take it or miss it.


One time I was thinning, our God is full of mercy and loves us so much so why did He decide on the last day that forgiveness will be removed from that day forward.  Jesus will take away love and forgiveness on that day.  You won’t have time to say, “Remember God how much you are full of mercy, please forgive me”, because He will tell you, forgiveness is gone.


Some versions of verse 28 say, “Wherever there is a carcass the vultures will gather,
 or “Wherever the corpse is, the vultures will gather”.  Other versions say, “Wherever the carcass is, the eagles will gather together”. 


Why do we have different versions?  One talks about vultures and the other about eagles.  One is talking about the body and the other the corpse.  This is one of the toughest verses in the Bible where many try to understand its meaning.  What does it mean?

First, when we talk about the vulture, it is a bird that is different from the eagle, but both are big birds.  Translations from the Greek word, the vulture and eagle are the same word.  That is why there are two different words used in different versions.


Luke 17:37, some versions say, “Where there is dead body, there the vultures will gather,” while other versions say, “Wherever the body is, the eagles will gather together”.

We see in some places it says vultures and in other places it says eagles. The differences are not the problem but the major problem is the spiritual warning that Jesus is telling us.  If we think about the vulture, this bird will only eat dead bodies.  That is their way.  It’s different from an eagle that hunts for live animals and eat it as a fresh animal after killing it.  You will not normally see an eagle eat a body that is already dead.


Spiritually you can see (1) dead bodies and (2) live bodies.


We know that in our spiritual lives we have things that are dead on one side and things that are alive.  Dead things in the Bible are everywhere, from the book of Genesis you can read about dead deeds and dead behaviour.  Our life is either full of life or death.  God created us as human being and when we talk about death, it means something that doesn’t have life.  It’s not easy to tell.


You might see your dog lying down and you think, “My animal is dead,” and you must come closer to check if they are alive.  You can be in the city and find someone lying on the ground and think they are dead and must come closer to touch or check their pulse to know if they are alive.  You can’t easily tell who is alive and who isn’t without coming closer and performing some kind of test to tell if they are alive or not.


The difference between death and sleeping is only one thing, it is the breath.  When someone is breathing then you know they are alive and when they are not breathing anymore, you may think they are just sleeping.


Jesus went to house of Jairus where the daughter was proclaimed dead and Jesus said, “Girl wake up”.  For those who have rest, they may somehow meet with Jesus and He can bring them back to life.  We shouldn’t rely on that.  When tribulation comes, those who remain will have to fight for their own soul.  Without grace to win that battle, they will not enter the Kingdom of God.


Jesus calls Himself life, “Whoever wants to live for eternity must come to me”.  Christ is life and the antichrist is death.  Love is life and hatred is death.  Praying is life, not praying is death.  There is a positive side that means life and the opposite side means death.


Death doesn’t only mean to leave this world and be separated from your family but also to be separated from God.  It is a shame when God chooses you and you are saved but at the last minute you decide not to follow him.  Spiritual death is our decision while the natural death is the decision of God.  Spiritual life is up to you and me to decide what path to walk through.  I need to live, then I must hold God’s hand and follow Him wherever He goes.  If I want to spiritually die, I don’t want to read Bible or pray anymore, or belong to God, this is my decision, then I will get lost.


A clear example is Luke 15, the prodigal son.  It was his decision and he decided to go from his father.  He was a child of the house but because of all the blessings given to him, he decided not to stay with his father anymore.  Maybe the father advised him not to go but he wanted to enjoy the world and discover what was outside of his glory because life in the Kingdom of God is boring, staying next to Jesus is boring, I want to go somewhere I can drink my beer, dance, and do whatever sin I want and we think that is the best life.


One time I was in a country and I asked an old lady, what do you enjoy in your life the most?  She answered, “I am a party girl, whenever there is a party, I am in heaven, music, dancing, drinking and I feel like I’m in heaven and everything is perfect”.  I was shocked because she was around my age group, “Really?”  “Yes, because I will not get this opportunity anymore so let me enjoy”.  But after enjoying, God will ask you, I gave you the chance to follow me and the strength to party.  There are many who entertained in this world and sacrificed their eternal life and where are they now?


Anna will you be happy to live for 500 years?  What if you live to 200?  You will be weak and maybe people will have to feed you.  Our lives are short on this earth.  Fight for something that is important, fight for eternal life where you will not lose your beauty or strength.  Do I need to fight for 20 years on earth and sacrifice for the whole of eternity or should I sacrifice now and invest in eternity.


Mathew 24:15-28, is talking about the antichrist (false prophets, false teachers).  Whatever the antichrist brings is death.  Even if it appears like life and enjoyable and entertaining, when you walk closer to it, death is here.


We are lucky to have Ange here (a registered nurse).  When life is taken away from a patient in hospital, how do you feel Ange?  Ange feels upset but it is normal, the life of this person reaches the end.  You remove the body and a new patient takes the bed.  You write down what you observed, that is it.  If someone is healed and discharged, again the nurse says, yes, they are ok now.


God is sad when you are dead, you must go somewhere else and you will live now in the cemetery with dead people.  For those who have the grace, they may have time to prepare their lives before to die and to pray but for those who are not, it will be too late to repent.

Satan is death (the corpse) who tries to bring vultures around him.  People are vultures, birds that have chosen dead bodies rather than the living bodies.  If you are not a vulture, you are an eagle.  There is nothing in the middle.  Vultures will see a dead body.  A dead body is lying down, easy life, you can touch them and do what you want.  Many people want the easy life.  I will find my joy in killing, stealing, lying, in prostitution because it is easy for the body to do.


Eagles will look from the distance and see a moving rabbit and the eagle must challenge itself to see if its capacity is good enough to catch the rabbit.  They will fly extremely fast to pick up the rabbit and of course the rabbit runs.  The eagle must fix its eyes and its legs have to know where to touch.  The eyes are not on its feet but the feet knows how to do its action.


What do you see in front of you? What are you fighting for?


I have a friend who will tell you every Thursday that Friday is coming!  They feel good because Friday is coming!  Is Jesus coming back on Friday?  No, I must get ready from Thursday what I will wear to go out on Friday.  In Ghana when I worked at the UN, Friday was a half day and my colleague would leave immediately to go to the night club.  


One day he invited me to the best one in Ghana.  We went to this night club with a big hall with lights everywhere but you can’t see because its dark and you can’t recognise faces of people.  The music was vibrating the floor and ceiling.  I asked him, “Paul, is this the type of life you enjoy?”  “Yes”.


You could see women walking around.  He took one with him.  In the morning I will repent.  We even start to plan our repentance.  I will do something wrong now and then I will repent later.  That is a wrong choice.  The next morning when the sun appeared, he looked at that lady who stayed with him, she was among the ugliest women on the planet, he was shocked. He became angry.  He said to me, I am stupid, I will never follow the colours of the world because the world will mislead you.


He rushed to the hospital because he wasn’t feeling well, he had the HIV test and it was positive.  I said, “Hallelujah”.  He asked, “Where is love?”  I said, “God gave you everything in your life but you didn’t look after it, so where is your love for God?”  He blamed others instead of blaming himself.


We as spiritual people, we must know what the Bible asks us to do and depend on God’s love and ask ourselves, will this please God or not?  God chose us first, “I want to live with you forever”.  Our answers matter.  When we tell God, I don’t want to live with you forever it is like any other husband who wants a divorce.  When someone tells you that they don’t want to live with you anymore, it is hard, it hurts.


God can wait for you like the prodigal son.  Lucky the boy decided to push himself out from where he was to come home.  The father did not leave his house to find him.  Meaning that you shouldn’t expect Jesus to look for you.  We don’t know for how long we will be alive.  We don’t know what will happen on our way.  Why leave the father’s house to start with?  We shouldn’t.  


For those that are eagles, whenever they see the dead body, they will not land there so that it is hard for satan to deceive you, “come here to enjoy sin,” while you know that sin is death.  We all know that the wages of sin is death but we go for it, we want to taste death and sin.


In my country, I see hundreds of pictures and videos of people being killed.  People are killed day are after for no reason.  All of that has made me think that life is cheap.  It only takes one second to kill someone and you can’t stop death even if you are a multimillionaire.  You can’t tell death, “I’m beautiful, wait,” death will tell you, “No”.


Many among us choose to go for death, to sin, because we believe that is where joy exists.  That is why we must go either for the corpse or what is alive.  Mathew 7:13, enter the straight gate because the broad way leads to destruction and many go that way.


There is a broad way and many are happy to go through that way rather than the narrow one that leads to life.  We follow the broad way because our friends are there, my boyfriend is there, so lets join them.  When pagans are organising parties, they never miss alcohol.  It must be there and then secondly music and then people come to enjoy.


After drinking a lot, someone becomes drunk.  We used to have a neighbour who would drink on Fridays and the more they drank the more the music increased and their voices grew louder and then they would end up arguing and then fighting each other.  When you reach that stage of becoming drunk, you lose your personability.  They will vomit, they will urinate, look messy and disgusting but for them, they enjoy it.  They may hurt themselves and then wonder in the morning where the pain comes from, they don’t remember the night before.


Some will find themselves in a police cell and don’t know how they got there.  Your reputation will go down and you will lose your place in the Kingdom of God but you prefer to do that and you believe you are enjoying life.


Romans 12:3, don’t think of yourself higher but just be normal.  Many Christian’s today think that they can’t miss out because without them it won’t be as entertaining because the family said or friend said, they can’t be absent.  They forget that they should think about others.  The first person to think about in your life is your God.  If I put myself here, where is God in this?  If I want to take all the glory, we should remember all glory should return to God.

We need to seek all that is alive.  Things that are alive are those that we don’t see.  Colossians 3:1-2, our mind must be set on things in heaven, not on things on this earth.  Whatever we do, we must remember not to seek things that are here.


2 Corinthians 4:18, what is unseen is eternal and that is what we should fix our minds and eyes on.  Sometimes we look at things and our mind tells us not to look twice and reject with your entire body.  Sometimes I see images from Congo and I will send those videos to people and some will say, don’t send anymore, there is a reaction in the entire body and mind and we feel that it is not good for us.  When you look at the scene around you, how do you feel?  Does your body, mind, spirit enjoy?


Jesus is telling us to look at the unseen things.  The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, kindness, joy, etc, focus on that. Once you start to focus on those things you are preparing your way to be a good eagle and a good eagle doesn’t fear the altitude.  A good eagle doesn’t fear to leave a great height and drop at a fast speed to reach life.  When God gives you life in a word, you must rush fast and leave everything for that verse and feed yourself.  The remaining part, take to your family and friends.


Eagles are selfish.  The first thing they do is to take the fish/rabbit away from where they caught it to eat.  When you get the Word of God, take it with you, go to your room and go through it again.  By taking a rabbit and going somewhere safe, the rabbit can’t escape and that is where the eagle will kill the rabbit and eat it one small portion after another.  When you get the Word of God, try to go in details and think about it.  Try if possible to make a great picture for your life: Bible study.  


It is not a matter of reading one verse and that will do, think about that verse.  That is your daily bread.  When you eat your favourite food, you want to eat it until you are satisfied.  When you read your Bible, you must make sure that satisfaction is reached and then make sure that others notice you have read the Word of God through your actions.  Today you see Christian’s using the Word of God to defend their sins, dead animals