In the last installment of the series titled “Our Blessed Hope”, we asked the question of whether or not we are living in the last days, right now in 2022. We examined the influence of dispensational premillennialism that has developed the “last days” as the few final years of world history rather than the entire period since Pentecost when, biblically speaking, the last days were inaugurated.
If you were to ask someone today if they believed we were living in the “last days” there is a good chance that many would answer “yes”. The reasons they would cite would be many but most of them would involve the unfolding of biblical prophecy before our eyes. And what kind of biblical prophecies would they cite as being fulfilled in our day or in the near-future? Undoubtedly, one would be the aggression against Israel by surrounding nations. This is probably why Middle-Eastern geopolitics is such a focus of modern dispensational Bible prophecy fascination.
Furthermore, things like the “abomination of desolation” are associated with the anti-Christ and the Great Tribulation. What are these events? And should we use them as signs to discern our own times?
Dispensational eschatology has saturated our culture but upon closer examination it is clear that we cannot accept its elements after careful study of the Scripture itself.
In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus’ teaching on the eschatological attack against Israel is recorded. These are written in what is called the “Olivet Discourse” since Jesus taught it while standing on the Mount of Olives, outside Jerusalem during the week leading to His crucifixion. We ought to study these passages carefully to determine if the dispensational teaching of an imminent attack against Israel is warranted. The three parallel passages in the three Synoptic gospels are: Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. In this article, we’ll examine Matthew 24 in detail and draw from Mark and Luke only at points since they cover the same subject matter in much the same language.
The Context of Matthew 24
Before getting to the passage itself, we should back up and determine what the context of the passage is.
For Matthew 24, we should really go all the way back to Matthew 21 to start getting the context for Jesus’ Olivet Discourse. In Matthew 21, Jesus enters Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, thus fulfilling Zechariah 9:9. He then cleanses the temple and curses a fig tree for its lack of fruit. The next day, the chief priests challenge Him and question His authority. This kicks off an extended passage where Jesus tells a variety of parables and debates with the chief priests. His parables in this section have to do with the failure of the chief priests to faithfully follow God and lead His people.
In Matthew 23, these parables and debates culminate in a fiery diatribe against the scribes and Pharisees which includes seven woes. Jesus concludes His woes with one final woe against the scribes and Pharisees:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
Matthew 23:29-36
After pronouncing this great and final woe on the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus mourns over the city of Jerusalem.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’
Matthew 23:37-39
This concludes chapter 23 and leads straight into chapter 24. This chapter opens with Jesus leaving the temple (which was the physical location context of the previous discourse against the Pharisees) while His disciples point out the majestic architecture of the Temple around them. Jesus shockingly predicts that the beauty of the Temple will be destroyed and that every stone of the Temple will be cast down (Matt. 24:2).
In v. 3 we read that Jesus is now on the Mount of Olives. This means that He has left the Temple and gone out of Jerusalem to the East and paused on the Mount of Olives. This may seem like a random detail but I believe it alludes to Ezekiel 11:23 where the glory of YHWH departs from the Temple and rests on the mountain to the East of Jerusalem. Here in Matthew, Jesus, described in Colossians 1:15 as the “image of the invisible God”, departs from the Temple and arrives at the mountain to the city’s East.
Verse 3 is important for understanding the context of the entire 24th chapter so it’s worth quoting in full:
As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
Matthew 24:3
We’ve already mentioned the significance of the Mount of Olives but we should note two more things:
- Audience: Christ is speaking privately to His disciples. This is not a public teaching to a wide crowd. It is a private teaching that is initiated by His disciples’ questions.
- Questions: Christ responds to the disciples’ questions about the timing of the events, the sign of His coming, and the end of the age. Is this meant to be one question? Is it meant to be three separate questions? It is easy to read this verse in 2022, in a dispensational-saturated culture, and read our cultural ideas about Christ’s return into the disciples’ questions. But we must resist this and interpret these questions (and Christ’s answers) in the context of the passage.
Concerning the disciples’ questions we should note more in detail:
- These Things: The disciples ask “when will these things be”? To what are they referring? Clearly they are referring to Jesus’ prophecy of the Temple’s destruction in the very previous verse.
- Your Coming: The word used here in Greek is parousia. It is used throughout the NT to refer to Christ’s Second Coming but it seems out of place in this context to refer to the “coming” of Christ as the Second Coming. One reason being that Jesus has not yet died, risen, and ascended. Why would the disciples anticipate Christ’s Second Coming if He is still with them?
- The End of the Age: The final question has to do with the end of the age. The Greek word used here is aiōn which means “age” not “world”. So the disciples are not asking about the end of world history and Christ’s Second Coming but they’re asking about the destruction of the Temple which Jesus had just prophesied. The “age” in question may be a reference to the Old Covenant age.
- Other Synoptic Accounts: The above conclusion is confirmed by the account of Mark which records only one question: “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?” (Mark 13:4) The same is true of Luke’s account (Luke 21:7).
When Will These Things Be?
With this understanding of the disciples’ question, we can better understand Jesus’ teaching. Jesus’ teaching is not first and foremost concerned with His Second Coming but instead with His aforementioned prophecy of the Temple’s destruction. He begins by clarifying to His disciples what the signs will not be. In vv. 4-13 He warns them that there will be “wars and rumors of wars” but that this will not be a sign of the end. Now, how many times have we heard, in our culture, that the sign of the end times will be “wars and rumors of wars”? But this is exactly what Jesus said was not the sign of the end!
Jesus says in v. 14 that “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” The end of the age will not precede the spread of the Gospel to all nations. What does this have to do with the Temple’s destruction? Well, there is biblical evidence that the Gospel did indeed spread to all nations and was proclaimed throughout the whole oikumenē (Greek word used in v. 14 which means “known world”, not the literal globe) before the Jerusalem temple was destroyed. For example, Paul writes in Romans 1:8 that the faith of his readers has been “proclaimed in all the world”. In Colossians 1:6 he says that the word of Truth is bearing fruit and increasing in the Colossian church as it is doing in the whole world. Paul indeed took the Gospel to “all nations” within a few decades of Christ’s prophecy in Matthew.
The Jewish temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. This was roughly 40 years after Jesus’ prophecy was given. It is very reasonable to read Matthew 24 and the parallel passages in Mark and Luke as referring to this event in AD 70 and not to the end of world history as many dispensationalists do. Furthermore, Jesus’ words are directed to His disciples and He speaks as if they will still be alive when these things take place. He addresses them with the word “you” six times in these 10 verses (vv. 4-14). And He addresses them in culturally and historically specific ways. For example, in v. 9 He promises to His disciples that “they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.” In Mark’s account, Jesus is even more specific by telling them that the “councils and synagogues” will be the context for this tribulation (Mark 13:9). This is exactly what the early apostles and Christians faced in the book of Acts.
We’ll conclude this article here before diving into v. 15 and the “abomination of desolation”. This deserves treatment more detailed than we can give here in this space so we will return to Matthew 24 later to examine this and what else Jesus says concerning the destruction of Jerusalem’s temple. Stay tuned for part two!