Mark 13:1-8

Mark 13:1-8 (NRSV)

 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” ² Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

³ When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴ “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” ⁵ Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. ⁶ Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. ⁷ When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. ⁸ For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

            Mark 13:1-8 is part of the apocalyptic discourse found in 13:1-37. 

 

 Mark 13:1-2 is a pronouncement story on the destruction of the Temple. It is a prophecy of the destruction of the temple.[1]

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” The disciples were not the only ones impressed with the stature and structure of the temple. The ancient world considered both Jerusalem and the temple in its heart to be magnificent. Dazzling white stone, intricate carvings, gold adornments, all made the temple building and its various courts a "wonder" to all, especially country bumpkin‑types like most of Jesus' disciples. By all accounts, the temple was an amazing piece of architecture. At the time of Jesus' ministry, it had been under construction for almost 50 years and was finally nearing completion. Josephus, the Jewish historian noted that its exterior lacked nothing that could astound the viewer. Massive gold plates covered the sides. The sun immediately radiated a fiery flash from which one needed to avert the eyes. First sight of it, one could mistake it for a snow-clad mountain, for the part of the temple not covered with gold was pure white. Some of the largest stones were 40 feet long, 12 feet high, 18 feet wide and bright white in their appearance. This was more than a temple in which to worship God; it was an incredible accomplishment of human beings. 

² Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” The saying illustrates Jesus’ insight into the religious and political condition of the day.  Jesus stands in the line of prophets.  Marveling at the size and glory of the temple as it bustled with Passover crowds; the horrifying prophecy of Jesus must have stunned the disciples. It left no room for negotiation. The double negative makes it emphatically clear that a future event will destroy every sign of the temple. Although shocking, this prophecy is actually a logical continuation of Jesus' activities in Mark 11:12‑21 and his "subversive" teachings delivered while at the temple itself (Mark 11:27‑12:44).  The Roman army destroyed the temple first by fire. After the flames died down, Titus then ordered the stones themselves torn down, leaving nothing standing. 

Mark 13:3-4 is the story of Jesus concerning the question posed by the disciples.[2] The story introduces verses 5-37. The actual discourse about the temple's ending and the "end times" begins. 

³ When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, a setting for the discourse to follow that is significant. First, Jesus and his listeners could enjoy a spectacular view out toward the temple from this vantage point. Second, there was a Hebrew tradition that identified the Mount of Olives as a site of redemption in the last days (see Zechariah 14:4‑5).  Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, showing that the audience accompanying Jesus to this location is only a portion of his disciples. As in other instances, when it came to important information, Jesus prefers giving "private" lessons, singling out only a few of his followers. Peter, James, John and Andrew are the first four disciples Jesus called, and now they are the first four to hear his chilling prophecy. ⁴ “Tell us, when will this (the destruction of the Temple) be, and what will be the sign that all these things (looking forward to the content of the rest of the discourse) are about to be accomplished?” Even before this lesson gets under way, the vocabulary the disciples use to ask their question makes it clear that this will be an eschatological revelation. The phrasing echoes the eschatological predictions made before Daniel by a divine messenger (see Daniel 12:7).  The disciples' usual denseness seems to disappear momentarily as they grasp the wider significance of Jesus' prediction. The temple's utter destruction signals the start of something more, the beginning of "end times." In typically Markan style, however, the disciples once again commit a theological faux pas and follow this insight by asking "when," which is asking for a "sign," which Jesus has already refused to do (Mark 8:11‑12). 

There was a cartoon which a radio preacher at a microphone speaking, and his assistant was in the background at a desk.  The first frame had the preacher saying, "Yes, the signs of the times definitely point to the end of the world tonight ...” The next frame shows the preacher gone, and the assistant saying: "... If you'd like a tape of today's message, simply write to Box 499 ..." [3]

Many Christians have a keen interest in this future. I find nothing new when people talk about the Parousia, the end of time, and Christ's return. In the year 1000, apocalyptic dreamers watched the skies for the apocalypse. The entire Middle Ages witnessed intense millenarian movements. Followers of Joachim of Fiore even resorted to self-flagellation, blaming themselves for Christ's failure to return on schedule. In the 1500s, Martin Luther thought the world was in its final days. William Miller, a Vermont pastor with thousands of followers, calculated that the world would end in 1843. J. F. Walvoord's 1974 book, Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East Crisis, was a million seller (even its updated and reissued 1990 edition). Hal Lindsey's Late Great Plant Earth was a multimillion seller through the 1970s and early 1980s. 

It would help in such matters that the question of when certain things will happen is on a need to know basis. We do not need to know. We do need to keep bearing the fruit of discipleship.

Most of us today are quite willing to discuss God and spirituality if we limit the discussion to an internal quest for the meaning of our lives. This discourse of Jesus is a reminder that Christianity has a hope for the redemption of creation and human history. Like the Gospels, many New Testament writings, and the New Testament itself, theology tends to put eschatology, as a discussion of the doctrine of last things, as its last chapter. Yet, in another sense, good theology has its eschatology accompanying it along the way to the end. Without the hope contained in the closing chapter, much of what Christianity says about creation, Christology, anthropology, ecclesiology, and Christian life, will make little sense. Eschatology attempts to keep chronos, time that passes by the clock and calendar, and kairos, the right and fulfilled time, in juxtaposition. It attempts a dimension of realism regarding the calendar. It attempts to sustain the expectation that, despite the incomprehensible nature of the direction of the present, the secret is that God is moving history toward its saving and grace-filled consummation. Such an orientation toward the future helps to see realistically the fallibility of the church, for it is not a finished product today. Christ finished his work on the cross and resurrection. The participation of the church in that work has not finished. The church is a community on the way to its completion. The same is true of our lives.[4]

I am not sure what to do with eschatology. It was important to Jesus and to the early church. People have misused it. Science and history would teach us that we are moving toward nothingness. Eschatology tells us that history does not end in a whimper but in redemption. Standing there in glory at the conclusion of all things is Jesus, the one in whom God has turned toward the world and each of us in love and grace. I modestly hope that Jesus and the early church are right. We are moving toward creation and history glorifying God. 

            Mark 13:5-8 contains sayings against deceivers and prediction of war.[5] Jesus' reply is a caution against the constant temptation to look for signs. In response to the disciples' request for more facts, Jesus gives them a discourse that combines informational data with inspirational ideals of how the faithful should interpret these signs of the end.

⁵ Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. ⁶ Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. The reference to false messiahs is interesting. We have no evidence of such rebellions until Bar Cochba in 132 AD.  The peril before them is that of others misleading them or deceiving them. The greatest danger deceivers pose to believers is the false notion that the Parousia is here, that the time for watchful vigilance is past.   The very appearance of "false prophets," Jesus cautions, should alert the faithful to an even more vigilant state. For example, Jesus notes that these deceivers will invoke the Messiah's name by claiming, "I am he," trying to usurp the power of the divine name. False prophets are masterful at attaching the credentials of heaven to their earthbound existence.  In verses 7-8, we find common apocalyptic expectation. ⁷ When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. ⁸ For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom (Isaiah 19:2). Kings, peoples, potentates, and tribes will be at war and ravage Greece.[6] “They” will make war against each other, people against people and kingdom against kingdom.[7] However, the point is that as they have in the past, wars and conflicts will continue to occur. However, the simple unfolding of human history is a story controlled and timed by God. In and of themselves, these events are simply part of God's gradual, unfolding plan for creation ‑‑ they are not the looked‑for, eschatological, end times.  Further, using Jewish images, Jewish reiterates his caution, for there will be earthquakes in various places (Judges 5:4f; Psalm 18:7f; Isaiah 24:19); there will be famines (Jeremiah 15:2; Ezekiel 5:17. People who do not die in war will die in earthquakes, those who escape that will die in fire, and those who escape that will die in famine.[8] There was a famine in the time of Claudius, earthquakes at Laodicea in 61 AD and Pompey in 62.  Jesus cautions his disciples not to let events in the natural world receive the false label as portents of an imminent eschaton. God has used such events before in human history. God will use them again. Amid them all, there is no need for fear.

This is but the beginning of the birth pangs. Everything belongs to the divine plan.  The insistence upon a plan is characteristic of apocalyptic forecasts. As specific signals of "the end," however, these events are clear examples of an extended time of pain and suffering that humanity will pass through as it waits for the eschaton to arrive.   In the Jewish tradition, suffering "birth pangs" is a symbol of divine judgment. In the same way, childbirth can be a long, drawn‑out torture; this period of pain and suffering may continue for a long time. God continues to work in human history, and divine judgment continues to be a part of that story. However, the eschaton is not yet upon us. The disciples will experience some "birth pangs," but they must keep themselves ready for those yet‑to‑come events that will genuinely usher in the eschaton. Jesus uses the image of labor to describe the end of time. Labor is a process that comes in waves. There are intervals of intense pain and struggle between which there is relative calm as the time of delivery draws gradually nearer. Each contraction may seem like the end, but there are often many hours of labor ahead prior to delivery, and the time varies with every birth. It is unpredictable in its onset and it is unpredictable in length once onset begins. This makes labor a particularly apt metaphor for the upheavals that will transform this flawed earth into the perfected earth of the age to come. According to George Bertram the Greek term, used here for labor pains or birth pangs, was already widely used in the Old Testament, intertestamental literature, classical Greek literature and contemporary Jewish teaching to describe a variety of major theological concepts. Plato apparently used it to describe the struggle for knowledge in which the teacher functions as the midwife to deliver the result of learning in the new student. [9]  Deuteronomy 32:18 compares God’s act in creation to a woman’s labor and delivery. Isaiah 26:17-18 uses the image of unsuccessful labor to describe Israel’s attempts to save themselves apart from God’s intervention. Bertram also notes that there are several verbs related to pregnancy and childbirth in Hebrew. Yet, the Greek  appears to be used predominantly in the LXX to translate the Hebrew verbs which refer, not to the act of conception, or the physical carrying of a child, but specifically to the physical struggle of labor (Deuteronomy 32:18; Psalm 28:8-9; 89:2; Proverbs 8:25; Isaiah 45:10; Song of Solomon 8:5; Psalm 7:14). Bertram notes, however, that it is only by intertestamental times, at Qumran, and elsewhere in Jewish teaching that childbirth becomes a metaphor for the cataclysmic events that will precede the coming of the Messiah (Bertram, 670-671). Labor and childbirth had become common metaphors for the expected birth of the eschatological age. Paul uses the image quite a lot, either to portray the suddenness of the end time’s coming (1 Thessalonians 5:3), the struggle of creation to transform itself into God’s new creation (Romans 8:22) or to describe his own struggle to “give birth” to the infant church (Galatians 4:19). In Galatians 4:27, Paul cites Isaiah 54:1 in his allegory of Hagar and Sarah, which likens the heavenly Jerusalem to Sarah who after years of barrenness God miraculously grants the experience of giving birth. Labor and childbirth also figure prominently in the image of the pregnant woman and the dragon in Revelation chapter 12. Essentially, Jesus’ use of the image of birth pangs for the coming of the messianic age is one of both warning and promise. Like the sudden onset of labor that inflicts both fear and surprise, a history of various catastrophes lies before the church. Nonetheless, those who resist the doomsday warnings of false messiahs will endure by faith and witness the joy of the true birth of the world to come.

---

[1] For some scholars, this is reason enough for them to consider it a prophecy after the event. Putting Jesus' prediction in historical context has put scholars in a predicament. Was Mark's gospel composed/compiled before or after the actual destruction of the temple in A.D. 70? There is good evidence that the prediction placed on Jesus' lips in verse 2 is a genuine pre‑destruction pronouncement. If Mark had written it after the temple's fall, as some claim, he could easily have inserted some telling details about its ruin to add to the text's accuracy. However, there is no such evidence. The general nature of the destruction prediction has led other scholars to suggest that Mark's gospel was quite likely composed between A.D. 66‑69 ‑‑ after several wars and skirmishes; after the early appearance of some very popular false leaders/false prophets (such as Simon Bar Cochba); but before A.D. 70 when the temple was actually destroyed.

[2] Most scholars think Mark composed it. The question appears to refer exclusively to the destruction of the Temple, rather than to the whole discourse.

[3] (Leadership, Winter 1985).

[4]  - Douglas John Hall, Confessing the Faith, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996, pp. 49, 476.

[5] This could be a Jewish-Christian prophecy, a liturgical poem, or an early Christian sermon. Most scholars do not think Jesus uttered these words. 

[6] Sibyline Oracle iii 635

King will lay hold of king and take away territory.

Peoples will ravage peoples, and potentates, tribes.

All leaders will flee to another land.

The land will have a change of men and foreign rule

Will ravage all Greece and drain off …

[7] IV Ezra xiii 31 (ca 100AD)

And they shall plan to make war against one another, city against city, place against place, people against people, and kingdom against kingdom.

[8] II (Apocalypse) of Baruch. 27:7, 70:3,8, 

In the sixth part: earthquakes and terrors.

And they will hate one another and provoke one another to fight. And the despised will rule over the honorable, and the unworthy will raise themselves over the illustrious. … And it will happen that everyone who saves himself from the war will die in an earthquake, and he who saves himself from the earthquake will be burned by fire, ad he who saves himself from the fire will perish by famine.

[9] (“, ,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974], IX.667-674),