EPISODE 155 GOSPEL OF MARK CHAPTER 13 Part 2 "Alert"

Welcome to Share the Word. As we get ready to close out Mark chapter 13, I'll start with a question. Are you someone who's keeping a close eye on the signs of the end of times? Great. In today's episode, Paul ties up aspects of the Olivet Discourse and looks closer at some specifics regarding the signs that Jesus talked about. Mark chapter 13, part 2.

Alert! If you visited Jerusalem today, every tour guide there would tell you, be sure you see the Wailing Wall. The Jews call it Kotel, the wall, because it doesn't need any more name for them. They consider that the holiest site in Israel. It's on the west side of the Temple Mount and is a section of the retaining wall dating back to when Herod the Great expanded the Temple Mount area more than 2,000 years ago. The Jews are not allowed to worship atop the Temple Mount today.

There's an Arab mosque sitting there, and the area is under Arab control as a result of a past peace agreement. So the Western Wall, the so-called Wailing Wall, is as close as Jews can get to their most holy site, the location of Solomon and Herod's ancient temples. Today, religious Jews come to the wall to pray. It often sounds like wailing, like lamenting, and that is why it's called what it's called. It's built of massive stone stacked blocks. There's no mortar between them.

Those who come to pray often put prayer requests on small pieces of paper, roll or fold them up, and leave them in the cracks between the stones. Twice a year, rabbis from a special religious order in Jerusalem collect them, usually more than a million each time. And they are buried atop the Mount of Olives. Isn't it sadly ironic that these requests of God, sure, many, many of them praying for the Messiah to come, are buried atop the Mount of Olives, the very place Jesus sat with his disciples when he delivered the Olivet Discourse, describing the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem. Of course, Christians believe that the Messiah is Jesus, who ascended back to heaven from this same Mount of Olives and whose second coming will be to this same location sometime in the future.

When I see photos of Jerusalem and see the many Jewish worshipers praying at the Western Wall, I can't help but think about all this. We're returning today to the discourse of Jesus recorded in Mark chapter 13 to tie up some loose ends from our last episode and be sure we have a reasonable overview of this important section of Scripture. I say reasonable, not the correct or the only, because even among those who take the Bible seriously, there are some different interpretations of the Olivet Discourse. For example, one big question revolves around what Jesus meant in verse 30 when he said, Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. I should step back a moment and say that unbelieving critics of the Bible have used that verse to try and discredit it over and over.

An intellectual who was influential in the 20th century, a British man named Bertrand Russell, wrote a book titled Why I Am Not a Christian. One of his points in that book is that after Jesus made all these prophecies in the Olivet Discourse, including the climactic prophecy of his own second coming, He then said to his disciples, This generation will not pass away until all these things take place. It's undeniable, Russell argued, as since no return of Jesus happened before the generation of those who heard him pass away, Jesus' prophecy did not come true. And if Jesus' prophecy did not come true, then he was a false prophet. And if he was a false prophet, Christianity falls flat. Admittedly, this sounds like a serious problem.

But Christian interpreters have put forward a few different suggestions to resolve it. Some have decided that everything Jesus says in this chapter can be explained as having already happened in the first century, within the generation of the disciples who heard this. I think that's very hard to argue, however. Some things Jesus describes just didn't happen in the first century, unless you really contort his words to mean something very different from how the disciples would have heard them. For example, Jesus also said at verse 10 that the gospel had to be proclaimed to all nations before the end of this age could come, and that certainly didn't happen within the lifetimes of the apostles listening to him that day. That's just one example.

There are two or three more that, hmm, I just can't make fit into that time frame, so I can't accept the interpretation of the phrase this generation as strictly the generation that Jesus was talking to that time. Another attempt to make this statement of Jesus, This generation will not pass away until all these things take place, make sense in this context is to understand the Greek word he used, genea, in English, in the sense of race of people rather than generation of people. This is the Greek word from which we take the English scientific term genus, meaning a category of life. Elsewhere in Greek literature, it does carry the meaning of race, as in a category of people, a certain race of people.

So some would answer the difficulty by saying Jesus meant that this race of people, meaning the Jewish race, would not disappear from the earth, even though Jerusalem would be destroyed and Israel would cease to exist as a nation after 70 A.D. I kind of like that interpretation because the survival of a Jewish race as a distinct people throughout history is something of a miracle after all they have gone through. That interpretation could be what Jesus meant. But usually in the New Testament, where the Greek word genea is used, it does mean generation, as English translations all render it, you know, all the people living within a specific time frame. I think most would say like a 30-year time frame, like the baby boom generation, those who were born after World War II.

If we retain that common usage, how can we explain Jesus' statement, This generation will not pass away until all these things come to pass? Well, the statement comes near the end of the Olivet discourse, after Jesus had told about the tribulation time and the sign he called the abomination of desolation, which we discussed last podcast, and ends with his description of his second coming, his return to the earth in power and glory. So I think it's most likely that this generation refers to the generation alive during the last years of this age, those that are living to see these final unmistakable signs. That generation, Jesus is saying, that is alive to see those signs is the generation which will see the end. It will not drag on and on, he was saying. Does that make sense?

The reason I think this interpretation is most likely is because that statement, This generation will not pass away, comes in the context of a parable, a brief analogy Jesus made beginning at verse 29. Listen. Then he told them a parable: Behold the fig tree and all the trees. As soon as they put forth leaves and you see it for yourselves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near. That's when he says, Truly, truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. It's March in Delaware as I write this. We've had some warm days mixed with some cold ones, but it only takes a few warm days in a row for the buds to come out on the trees, the beginnings of new leaves. I don't have any fig trees in my yard because, frankly, I hated Fig Newtons as a kid, something my mother tried to pass off as real cookies. But I do have quite a few other trees. And fortunately, Jesus said, Behold the fig tree and all the trees.

This happens in the spring to all the trees, he's saying. You see them budding and little leaves forming, and you know that the seasons are changing. You know that summer is right around the corner. In his analogy, this represents the change from our present age to the next age, the kingdom age, which he will inaugurate when he returns. When you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near. He's answering the disciples' original question about when the kingdom of God is coming.

When you see these things, what things? Well, in this whole chapter, I see a progression of things happening in Jesus' prophetic discourse. As I said last episode, Jesus, during his earthly ministry years, was somewhat self-limited. He, like other biblical prophets who were shown visions of the future, did not necessarily see the time they would occur or the intervals between them. Jesus foresaw the destruction coming for Jerusalem, but he didn't say when that would happen. He foresaw many other things he talks about here, like persecutions and wars and famines and natural disasters and so on.

He suggests that these things are going to get worse as time moved forward, but he also saw some very specific things beyond them, things that happen in the final tribulation era, like that great sign he called the abomination of desolation, when that image or idol is set up in the holy place in the temple in Jerusalem by the Antichrist. He specifically said, I give you my word, these things are going to happen, but as to when, I don't know when. I believe he knows now, now that he's back in heaven and is glorified form, but when he was talking to his disciples as he was here living as a man, he didn't know exactly when. The more specific things he mentions, we can associate with the buds and leaves popping out in his fig tree analogy. Like, for example, when he said, The gospel has to be proclaimed to all the nations first. Share the Word is actually a part of that.

The Christian missions movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, when thousands of missionaries from England and the U.S. in particular carried the gospel to most of the reachable places around the world, was a large step in this direction. But now, the internet is quickly wiring the world together, enabling our generation to finish the job. The Great Commission will be fulfilled before Jesus returns. The gospel will be made known in all nations. In Luke's version of the Olivet Discourse found in chapter 21 of his gospel, another specific clue is given when Jesus says, After Jerusalem is overrun and many of her people fall by the edge of the sword and others are driven among the nations, Jerusalem will be trampled under the feet of Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles have run their course.

After the Romans decimated Jerusalem in 70 A.D., as we've discussed, it was not a Jewish city again until 1967, more than 1,900 years later when it was recaptured by the Jews during the famous 1967 Six-Day War. It was trampled under the feet of Gentiles, as Jesus put it, all those intervening centuries. But as I write this, there's only a small quarter of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount acres that remain in Gentiles' hands, and for how much longer? I've mentioned a few times that the horrible sacrilege Jesus said will be the specific sign that the end of the age is near, the abomination of desolation standing in the temple, obviously requires that a third temple be built. That specific sign can't happen until a temple is once again in Jerusalem. But I can tell you, all the plans have been drawn for that temple.

All the implements that must go into it have been forged. DNA analysis of the priests who can serve there has been done. Animals have been bred to the specific requirements of the law of Moses, which can be sacrificed there. There's only the sticky political problem of who controls the Temple Mount. That is standing in the way of the third temple being built. The religious Jews are more than ready to move forward on that important project.

There are other things happening or developing now which are discussed in other prophetic passages. We'll get to them at another time. But just from what I've said, you probably can see why many who take the Bible seriously are watching these developments and events closely. We believe Jesus was describing literal events that would escalate and finally explode into the seven-year tribulation era that will end this age. It's only after that time of judgment has run its course that Mark briefly describes what Jesus said about the most dramatic event in world history. This is at verse 24 in this chapter.

But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the heavens, and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken. And then they, the generation alive at that point in time, will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with power and great glory. And he will send forth his angels and gather the elect from the four winds, from the farthest ends of the earth to the farthest reaches of heaven. These lines about the sun being darkened, the stars falling, the heavens shaking, and so on, those are apocalyptic descriptions by Old Testament prophets. It's things that Mark is quoting from Old Testament, but they are looking forward to the time in the future of great divine judgment on the earth. I've always thought of them as poetic and figurative in their Old Testament contexts.

But here, since all the things Jesus has been describing are objective phenomena, I'm inclined to believe he's describing real cosmic events that will occur just before he returns. Imagine the world suddenly going black as if the sun and moon are extinguished, and then people on the earth seeing massive meteor showers as the stars burn out and are careening through space, and the foundations of the universe itself feel like they are shaking, like they are ready to transform into something else. That'll be terrifying, or else exhilarating, depending on one's perspective. Terrifying to those who do not know God in that generation. Exhilarating to those who are familiar with Scripture and are looking for these very signs to tell them the awful tribulation is over and Jesus is returning.

Then, in the blackness of the sky will suddenly appear the burning Shekinah cloud of God's glory, glowing brighter and brighter as the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, with a massive army of heavenly beings descends from heaven to the earth. Revelation chapter 19 describes that coming of Christ like a warrior on a white horse to destroy his enemies and also to rescue his people. As Jesus says here, the angels will gather those who belong to God from every corner of the globe. That's the final scene, the climax of this age. Let's step back for a moment from that incredible scene and recap what I've been trying to describe over these two lessons from Mark 13. As someone who interprets the Bible literally when reasonably possible, meaning literally except when it's obviously something figurative.

My overall understanding of this passage is that it generally moves through history progressively. It starts with Jesus telling his disciples about the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. We know that occurred in 70 A.D. Then in verses 4 through 13, he describes things his followers should realize and be prepared for as things that will happen going forward because the kingdom was not coming immediately as they expected: wars, famines, persecution, natural disasters, false prophets arising, and so on. Things that have gone on, in fact, throughout history. Jesus suggests, with his labor pains analogy, these things will only get worse toward the end of this age.

Then at verse 14 and following, he gets to some specific things that will happen and are definite signs the world has entered the final tribulation era. Let the reader understand, Mark alerts us. The sacrilege in the temple that will be in Jerusalem at the end of this age, the abomination of desolation, the Antichrist setting up his own image in the temple's holy place. That will be the most obvious sign, like a big flashing red light. That will trigger the final great tribulation era. Jesus' warning is to get out of Jerusalem as far as possible at that point.

Remember, he doesn't describe how much time this all covers or intervals between these events he sees, but he assures his disciples these things are ahead. It's elsewhere described more in detail in Daniel and Revelation. We learn that that final tribulation actually lasts seven years, and that the Antichrist declaring himself a god, setting up his image in the temple, is in the middle of those seven years. So, seeing that sign, three and a half more years of intense tribulation remain. This is not just a time of trouble because things on the earth are going bad, countries are fighting with each other, natural disasters are happening, and so on, but also a time of divine judgment raining down from heaven. It's called the time of God's wrath in the book of Revelation, a time like the world has never experienced before, Jesus says.

It's after that seven years of judgments has run its course that those cosmic signs Jesus describes appear, the sun being darkened, the stars falling, and so on. And that suddenly marks the end of this age, and the Messiah, the Son of Man, will appear then in power and glory. I can only imagine what kinds of feelings were going through Jesus' mind as he told his disciples about his final victory at the second coming in the future, while he is actually facing his passion and the torture of the cross within days. I'll be quick to tell you that this is only how some scholars interpret Jesus' Olivet discourse. Others have different interpretations. I personally believe that understanding biblical prophecy is progressive, meaning things get clearer as time of fulfillment nears, and it's best understood by those believers who are actually there and experience it.

That was certainly what happened with the prophecies regarding Jesus' first coming, wasn't it? So, I don't want to be too dogmatic as we seek to understand and interpret biblical end times prophecy. We certainly understand them better than people in the past, certainly better than Jesus' disciples would have understood them that day, and especially those who are living at the time of fulfillment in the future, they will see them much more clearly than we do. I don't doubt that. Speaking of clarity, I want to be very clear that I do not think that we are in the final time of tribulation now. In fact, I don't think church age believers will enter that time, that final seven years of judgment.

If you want to understand why, you can go back and listen to episode 87 based on 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. It's called Going Up. But I do think a fair argument can be made that, to use Jesus' terms in the fig tree analogy, the buds are popping out and the tender leaves are starting to appear. The gut feeling the 40% have who responded to the Pew poll told you about it last episode. Yes, I believe we are living in the end times. Hey, they're probably not feeling that without good reasons.

In conclusion, and this is important, if the earlier things Jesus prophesied about Jerusalem being overrun, about the temple being torn stone from stone, about the people of Jerusalem being put to the sword and those who escaped being scattered among the nations, all of which literally happened just as he foretold, don't you think the rest of this discourse, the rest of these prophecies that are still ahead of us, the tribulation time, his physical return to the earth, the judgment of his enemies, all these things will also happen just as he said? I bet my life they will. Jesus finished this amazing revelation of the future by saying to his disciples, Watch, be alert, for you don't know when the time is coming. It's like a man on a journey who left his house and gave authority to his slaves, each one his tasks, and commanded the doorkeeper to be alert.

Therefore you be on the alert, since you don't know when the master of the house is coming back. Otherwise, he might come and find you asleep. Find you asleep. That is, checked out, with the return of Christ the furthest thing from your mind on the daily. I don't know about you, but I want to stay alert to what's going on and engaged with the task Jesus has assigned to me while he is gone. I hope this reminder from Mark chapter 13 challenges you to adopt that same mindset as well.

This is Paul for Share the Word. Paul, once again, thank you for all of the time and work you put into bringing clarity and insight to every episode. It's clear that the Olivet Discourse will continue to be debated and discussed until, well, the second coming of Christ. But as important as the when is to us all, I stand by my hope and prayer that we all ramp up our efforts to share the good news with everyone that we can. As a matter of fact, I'd like to ask you to please take a moment and watch the video on the front page of our website, ShareTheWord.org. The video is labeled Gospel, and after watching the video, we'd love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions that you might have.

Please email us at info at ShareTheWord.org. If you're not sure how to share the gospel or how to get the conversation started, please email us. We'd love to help. That's why we're here. We're here to help. Email us at info at ShareTheWord.org.