The New Testament · The Gospels · Book 47 of 73
Prophecy in Matthew
Matthew is the Gospel of fulfillment. Again and again he writes that something happened “to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.” Then, on the Mount of Olives, Jesus himself becomes the prophet and speaks of the Temple's fall, the life of the Church and his return.
In progress: 10 passages so far
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The book at a glance
Tradition attributes the first Gospel to the apostle Matthew, the tax collector called by Jesus (9:9). Written for a community steeped in the Jewish Scriptures, it presents Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of David, and the new Moses who teaches from the mountain. Its five great discourses end with the Olivet Discourse (chapters 24–25), the longest teaching in the Gospels on the last things.
Matthew looks back and forward. Looking back, it shows Old Testament prophecy fulfilled in Christ, using a formula more than ten times. Looking forward, it records Jesus' own prophecy and, in chapter 24, a discourse written in the apocalyptic style of Daniel. On this page, Jesus' prophecies are where the four categories matter most.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 1:22–23; 2:5–6, 15 | Born of a virgin, in Bethlehem, called out of Egypt | Fulfilled |
| 12:38–41 | The sign of Jonah | Fulfilled |
| 16:18–19 | The Church built on the rock | Unfolding |
| 16:27–28 | Some here will not taste death | Fulfilled Mystery |
| 24:1–2 | Not one stone upon another | Fulfilled |
| 24:4–14 | Birth pangs, persecution, the Gospel to all nations | Unfolding |
| 24:15–28 | The desolating abomination and the great tribulation | Fulfilled Mystery |
| 24:29–31 | The Son of Man coming on the clouds | Future |
| 24:36–25:13 | No one knows the day or the hour | Future |
| 25:31–46 | The Last Judgment | Future |
The passages
“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”
- Reading
- Matthew opens with three fulfillments: Isaiah 7:14, the virgin's son (1:23); Micah 5:1, the ruler from Bethlehem (2:6); and Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I called my son” (2:15). Hosea spoke of Israel's exodus; Matthew sees Jesus living Israel's story again, faithfully.
- Note
- These show the “more than one fulfillment” pattern. Isaiah's sign spoke first to King Ahaz; Hosea's words looked back before Matthew saw them look forward. See how each book is read.
- See also
- Matthew's last words echo his first: “I am with you always, until the end of the age” (28:20). Emmanuel, God with us, from beginning to end.
“Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.”
- Reading
- Asked for a sign, Jesus gives only one, the same he gives in the Temple in John 2: his death and resurrection. Fulfilled on Easter morning.
- See also
- The Temple of His Body; Matthew 16:4; 26:61.
“You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”
- Reading
- Jesus speaks in the future tense: I will build. The building begins with Peter and the apostles and goes on through the centuries (CCC 552–553, 881). It is the same building Paul describes, the temple “growing” in the Lord (Ephesians 2:21–22), and the promise holds: the powers of death will not overcome it.
- Why unfolding
- The Church is still being built, and still under assault. Revelation shows the same Church as the woman kept safe in the desert (12:6, 14) and the city whose foundations bear the names of the twelve apostles (21:14).
“There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
- Reading
- The Fathers most often saw this fulfilled six days later in the Transfiguration (17:1–8), where three apostles saw the kingdom's glory. Others point to the Resurrection, Pentecost, or the judgment on Jerusalem in AD 70.
- Why mystery
- The Church has not fixed one reading. All agree that Jesus was not mistaken about a timetable for the end; he expressly said no one knows it (24:36).
“There will not be left here a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.”
- Reading
- As the disciples admire Herod's Temple, Jesus foretells its destruction. Forty years later, in AD 70, Roman armies under Titus burned the Temple and razed the city, as the historian Josephus records in The Jewish War. The disciples' question that follows (24:3) joins two things: the Temple's fall and “the end of the age.” Jesus' answer moves between them, and that is the key to the whole discourse.
“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come.”
- Reading
- False messiahs, wars, famines and earthquakes are “the beginning of the labor pains” (24:8), not signs that the end is here. Persecution, betrayal and lawlessness will cause “the love of many” to grow cold (24:12), a warning the Church links to the final trial and apostasy (CCC 675). Meanwhile the Gospel goes out to all nations.
- Why unfolding
- These things have marked every century. The preaching of the Gospel to all nations is still under way.
- See also
- The four horsemen (Revelation 6:1–8) follow the same order: conquest, war, famine, death.
“When you see the desolating abomination spoken of through Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place…”
- Reading
- Jesus takes up Daniel's image (Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11), first fulfilled when Antiochus IV set up a pagan altar in the Temple in 167 BC (1 Maccabees 1:54). Jesus applies it to the coming profanation and destruction of the Temple. Luke's version makes this explicit: “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies” (Luke 21:20). Many Fathers also saw in it a figure of the final Antichrist, “seated in the temple of God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4).
- Why two labels
- Fulfilled in the events of AD 66–70. Whether the passage also points to a last trial still to come is held by many Fathers but not settled by the Church.
“They will see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”
- Reading
- The darkened sun and falling stars are the language of Old Testament apocalyptic (Isaiah 13:10; Joel 2:10), and the Son of Man on the clouds is Daniel's vision (Daniel 7:13–14). His angels gather the elect “from the four winds.” The Church professes this return in the Creed: he “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”
- Note
- Some interpreters read these verses as symbolic language for the judgment of AD 70. The Church's faith in a real, visible return of Christ does not depend on settling that question: “every eye will see him” (Revelation 1:7; CCC 668–682).
“But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.”
- Reading
- The rule for every reader of prophecy, and the reason this site sets no dates (CCC 673). Jesus follows it with images of readiness: the days of Noah, the thief in the night, the faithful servant, and the ten virgins with their lamps. The point is not to calculate but to be ready.
“Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”
- Reading
- The Son of Man sits on his glorious throne and all the nations are gathered before him. The judgment turns on love shown or refused to the least (CCC 678, 1038–1041). Revelation's great white throne (20:11–15) shows the same scene.
- For now
- The future judgment is decided by present choices: every act of mercy is a stone in the building.
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: the Beatitudes and the kingdom (5:3–12), the mission discourse and persecution (10:16–23), the parables of the kingdom and the harvest at the end of the age (13:24–50), the coming of Elijah (17:10–13), the sign of the Son of Man and the parable of the fig tree (24:30–35), the talents (25:14–30), “the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power” (26:64), and the Great Commission (28:18–20).
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