It’s well known that Jesus had a few things to say about the end of the world. Most people who’ve read the gospels know that Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21 tell pretty much the same story, which goes as follows.
During the last week of his life, Jesus and his disciples were in the Temple. One of his disciples marvelled at the size of the stones used to build the Temple. Jesus said that not one of the stones would be left on top of another—they would all be thrown down. Later, on the Mount of Olives, while looking down at the Temple Mount, some of the disciples asked for more information on that. And Jesus launched into a series of predictions about the signs of the coming disaster.
The disciples must have assumed that the predictions Jesus made would all be fulfilled in their lifetimes. Over the centuries, Christians have expanded that time horizon a bit. According to the most common view, some of the predictions were to happen in the first century, while others would be pushed forward to some unknown date in the future when Jesus will return. But people don’t all agree on which predictions are about the first century and which are about the Second Coming.
Wars and Rumors of War
The first sign Jesus predicted was that the disciples would hear of “wars and rumors of war.” This is not actually very specific. This phrase has been used for many centuries by those convinced that the end of the world was coming soon. It’s just a fact that the long history of humans has always been marked by “wars and rumor of war.”
So this prediction has been used to refer to both the first century and to practically every century since then.
But Jesus specifically says that even when you hear about these “wars and rumors of war,” you shouldn’t be alarmed because the end is not yet. It’s only the beginning of what he called the “birth pangs.”
They Will Hand You Over
The second sign Jesus predicted was that the disciples would be “handed over to councils” and that they’d be beaten in synagogues and stand before governors and kings. This sort of thing is also not very specific. That sort of thing has been happening for a long time, although the part about being beaten in synagogues is not quoted very often, because that’s not been a thing since the first century.
There’s also a prediction about the good news being proclaimed in all nations. For many centuries, Christians have discussed what “all nations” means, and the definition has expanded quite a lot since the meaning that Jews in the first century assigned to it.
So again, both of these predictions have been applied to the first century and to every century.
Flee to the Mountains
Jesus warns of a terrible event that is often translated as “the abomination of desolation” or “the desolating sacrilege.” And he warns that when people see this, those living in Judea should flee to the mountains.
Most people accept that the main application of this was actually in the first century. It’s well-known that in the mid-60s of the first century, the Jews living in Jerusalem took this advice to heart. Before the Jewish Revolt of AD 66, they left Jerusalem and crossed the Jordan River and relocated in a town called Pella. (I wrote about this event in my novel Retribution.)
You can visit Pella today, in the modern nation of Jordan. It’s a walk of about three or four days from Jerusalem, far enough to be safe from the destruction that befell Jerusalem in the year AD 70. The Jesus Movement in Jerusalem survived because they listened to the warning of Jesus and left.
The Coming of the Son of Man
The next set of predictions seems to have little to do with the first century and everything to do with some later time. The sun will be darkened. The moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from heaven. The powers in heaven will be shaken. And then the “Son of Man” will be seen coming in the clouds with power and great glory.
Most Christians today will tell you that this never happened. Most Christians interpret “the coming of the Son of Man” to mean the Second Coming of Jesus. Most Christians believe this is going to happen in the future. But there’s a bit of a puzzle here, and different people have different takes on how to solve the puzzle.
This Generation Will Not Pass Away
The puzzle is that Jesus clearly says that “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” And of course the generation who actually heard his prediction has all died out.
Some have suggested that “this generation” means “this human race.” And clearly, humans are still here, so therefore it’s OK that Jesus has not yet returned as the Son of Man. But it’s hard to see why Jesus would have bothered to say that humans would still be around until the end. That’s obvious, isn’t it? If no humans were around at the end, it wouldn’t actually be the end. If all humans died out, that would be the end of the world as we know it. So if this is what Jesus meant, it’s vacuously true, but Jesus was not the kind of person to say things that are vacuously true.
Some have suggested that “the coming of the Son of Man” is a phrase that first appears in Daniel 7:13, and therefore, we should ask what Daniel meant by this phrase and who Daniel thought was the “Son of Man.” One theory says that Daniel’s “Son of Man” was meant to be an angelic warrior who would fight for God’s people to establish the messianic kingdom. Another theory says that in Daniel 7, the phrase “Son of Man” is actually defined to be “God’s people.” What these theories have in common is that they assume that the prediction is about the first century, and not about the Second Coming.
There are probably other theories on how to resolve the puzzle, but the ideas above seem to be the main contenders.
I don’t have a theory on how to resolve this question. It’s OK to not know the answer to every question.
The End of the World
Here’s what we do know. We know that in the first century, members of the Jesus Movement understood these sayings of Jesus to be about their own place and time. We don’t know exactly who or what they understood to be the “Son of Man”. But we know that they took seriously the bit about “this generation.” They left the city at the direction of Jesus and saved their lives.
We know that the prediction Jesus made about the Temple came true. The Temple Mount is still there, but the Temple and all the other buildings that stood on top of the Temple Mount were destroyed in AD 70. The Roman general Titus burned it all to the ground. In the second century, the emperor Hadrian gave permission to rebuild the Temple, but he later went back on it, and the Temple has never been rebuilt.
We know that the destruction of the Temple was the end of the world as Jews of the first century knew it. They continued living on the same planet, but everything had changed. As the well-known scholar N.T. Wright has said, this was an earth-shaking event, quite as devastating as if the sun had stopped shining, the moon had stopped reflecting, and the stars had all disappeared.
The Temple was gone. The religion built on the Temple became obsolete overnight. The destruction of the Temple marked a revolution in history that created the world we live in. From the ashes of the Temple, a new religion sprang up, rabbinic Judaism which has bloomed and thrived to this day. And the Jesus Movement morphed from a mostly-Jewish religion into a mostly-Gentile religion that has also bloomed and thrived to this day.
But neither rabbinic Judaism nor Christianity are identical to the religious world Jesus grew up in. They can’t be. Everything changed. Not everything disappeared, but everything morphed.
And this makes it sometimes tricky to understand the life and message of Jesus. Those of us on this side of the cataclysm have a hard time understanding those people who grew up on the other side. The reason I write the kind of novels I write is because everything changed. Writing novels about that place and time helps me make sense of that world. I hope they help my readers make sense of it too.
