Yesterday, I preached on the notoriously difficult “Olivet discourse,” which is found in Mark 13, Matthew 24-25, and Luke 21. My text was Mark 13:24-37, whose focus is on the Second Coming.
But it’s not completely focused on the Second Coming, which is why it’s so difficult. As I pointed out, possibly the most controversial verse in the entire Bible, verse 30 (“Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”), refers not to the Second Coming but to events leading to the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70.
How do I know? As I argued in my sermon, the disciples’ original question to Jesus in verse 4 (“Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?”) related to Jesus’ warning that there will “not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (verse 3).
In verses 3-23, then, Jesus talks specifically about signs and events leading up to the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. Notice in two other places (besides v. 30) he refers to “these things” (verses 23 and 29), and they refer to the events leading up to 70. His main message to his disciples living in Jerusalem in those days is simple: Flee. Don’t be distracted, for example, by reports of false messiahs or people claiming to be Christ—which we know from history happened during the revolutionary fervor that led to the events of 70.
This is why, I think, it becomes necessary for Jesus to address the coming Day of the Lord in verses 24-27: the Son of Man won’t reappear, Jesus emphasizes, until after the events of 70 take place. Without this clarification, it seems likely that Christians would be confused and stay behind in Jerusalem and be killed.
As William L. Lane points out in his commentary on Mark, quoting the fourth-century historian Eusebius, Christians didn’t stay behind. However confusing these words are for us today, Christians living in Jerusalem back then got the message: they heeded Christ’s warning and fled:
“But before the war, the people of the Church of Jerusalem were bidden in an oracle given by revelation to men worthy of it to depart from the city and to dwell in a city of Perea called Pella. To it those who believed in Christ migrated from Jerusalem. Once the holy men had completely left the Jews and all Judea, the justice of God at last overtook them, since the had committed such transgressions against Christ and his apostles. Divine justice completely blotted out that impious generation from among men” (Ecclesiastial History III. v. 3).[1]
All that to say, verse 30 refers to the events of 70 and verse 32 (“But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”) refers to the Second Coming. Lane writes:
In order to understand the relationship of this affirmation [that no one knows the day or the hour of the Second Coming] to the assurance given in verse 30 that the events preliminary to the destruction of the Temple will occur within the experience of that generation, it is necessary to give full force to the adversative particle in verse 32: “I say to you solemnly, this generation shall not pass away… As for that day and that hour, on the contrary, no one knows…”[2]
Unlike the first event, which included signs by which Christians would know it’s going to happen, the second event won’t. Thus Jesus tells the parable about the master returning at an unexpected hour.
I don’t pretend this solves every problem with the Olivet discourse. At the very least, however, it clarifies that Jesus wasn’t mistaken when he said that “these things” would take place within a generation of his words.
1. William L. Lane, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 468.
2. Ibid., 482.