Context
Parable of the Tenants — Mark 12
“A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed.
9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.
Later in Chapter 12, as we looked at last week, The Lord Christ has a scathing denunciation of the 1st century religious Professionals.
Here the Lord Christ speaks of the coming ruination of the Temple.
The theme running through Mark 12 and 13 is the end of the Old Covenant Order. When the disciples come to the Lord Christ to ask about “the End,” they are not asking about the end of the world. They are asking about the End, to them, of their present Temple order.
That this is a conflict that only has one of two possible endings is the fact that the enemies of the Lord Christ realize also that if they are not to be ended they must end the Lord Christ and in Chapter 14 we begin to see that unwind.
As we said last week this is a worldview conflict which means either the enemies of Jesus have to end or that the Lord Christ Himself must end.
It is interesting that the Disciples come to ask Jesus in private about the end,
3 And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?”
I note this private conversation because throughout Mark, Jesus reserved some of his most essential teaching for private moments with the disciples. Jesus explained the parables to them privately (4:34; cf. 4:10-12). He took Peter, James, and John alone to a high mountain and revealed his transfigured self to them (9:2-8). Privately, the disciples asked Jesus why they couldn’t cast out a demon in a specific case (9:28). Here, in chapter 13, the disciples — Peter, James, John, and Andrew — ask about the timing of the telos (or, “end”; 13:3).
So, we see, that for Mark there are many private teachings. At least in terms of the Temple, the reason might be that the conversation was private was that such public teaching of the same truths might be considered treason and sedition. So, the Lord Christ teaches privately.
Of course this can remind us that not every truth need be set forth in a public setting. We have to pick and choose what teaching is for private consumption and what teaching is for public consumption.
Now as we get to the meat of the conversation here we have to note time indicators of the text. We emphasize this because so many today want to suggest that texts like these are yet completely future. But while, these conversations were future to the Disciples I am convinced that they are past to us.
In this regard note
“Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
The Lord Christ, in all that He is about to teach, is teaching about the buildings that stood in the 1st century. He is not talking about the ruination of some future Temple. He is speaking of the ruination of the 1st century Temple. As such once that 1st century Temple complex is gone the prophecy itself is past.
Another time indicator here is
And Jesus began to say to them, “See that no one leads YOU astray.
Note the pronoun “YOU.” The Lord Christ is not talking about the danger of some hypothetical people in some far distant future being led astray. He is talking about the danger of those very alive disciples being led astray. So, unless we believe that the Disciples are still alive, to be potentially lead astray, we have to understand that what the Lord Christ was speaking of here was not only in regard to that 1st century Temple complex but also in regard to those 1st century disciples.
Quickly another time indicator regarding the 1st person plural pronoun is in vs. 7,
7 And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed.
Q.) — When who hears of wars and rumors of wars?
A.) Those 1st century disciples.
All that is being said here should be understood as past to us but future to them.
Now, this is monumentally important because legion is the name of Christians who believe that this kind of apocalyptic literature remains future to us and as such they are looking for Temples to be rebuilt that can be cast down again. They are mapping out possible end date return scenarios of the Lord Christ by reading passages like this up against Newspaper accounts of what is going on in Israel.
They look at nation rising against Nation … they see famines … they see earthquakes and they somehow insert all of that in a belief system that looks for a different “end” than the end that the Lord Christ was speaking about here.
And so we get the prophecy Snake oil salesman. We get John Hagee running around selling books about 4 blood moons. We get books like, “88 reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988,” by Edgar C
When we are wrong on this “end” business, and we’ve been wrong for 2000 years because this wrongly understood “End” has not come then we look like fools running around saying the “world is ending, the world is ending,” Jesus is coming back next week.
An example of the ship wreck all this wrong headed futurism can do I offer just one example I came across in my preparation,
“When the designated range of dates passed, I remember there being a lot of confusion and anger in the church and we ended up leaving. After several years of religious exploration dosed with much more skepticism than before, my wife and I both ended up rejecting Christianity all together.”
A great deal of confusion in Church History, both modern and long past, could have been avoided if texts like these were understood to have been future to the 1st century hearers but past to us.
Now … this is not to say that all predictive events in the Scripture are past but it is to say that many that are taken as yet Future are indeed now fulfilled already. Mark 13 is one of those texts.
Well, as we continue on the issue of Timing we consider vs. 2
2 And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
The Lord Christ has drawn their attention to the 1st century Temple complex and as that is the building that must be destroyed, in order to know when this prophecy was fulfilled we need only ask when that happened. When we ask that question we see in history that this temple was thrown down in AD 70.
In AD 70 the Jewish End came with the Temple stones ruined just as the Lord Christ predicted. The Roman General Titus came against Jerusalem for its Rebellion against Rome and crushed it.
Flavius Josephus, the Priestly descended Historian writes of the Temple in his book “Wars of the Jews”,
“there was left nothing to make those who had come thither believe it had ever been inhabited.”
A book by Historian Thomas Newton, accessing old records, and written in 1754 tells us,
For when the Romans had taken Jerusalem, Titus ordered his soldiers to dig up the foundations both of all the city and the Temple…. As we read in the Jewish Talmud and in Maimondes, Turnus Rufus, or rather Terentius Rufus, who was left to command the army in Jerusalem, did with a ploughshare tear up the foundation of the Temple; and thereby signally fulfilled those words of Micah (3:12) “Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field.” Eusebias too affirms, that it was ploughed up by the Romans, and he saw it lying in ruins.
So again, the End that the Lord Christ is speaking of here is NOT the End of the Cosmos but the End of the Jewish Order… the end of what made Judaism, Judaism… the End of the Sacrificial and ritual system … the End of the Jewish Age. Here is also the End of a distinctly Jewish Church and with this end comes the in rushing of the Gentiles into God’s Church.
With this End that the Lord Christ speaks of in the little apocalypse of Mark 13 comes in God’s New World Order. Instead of looking to the Sacrifices to turn away God’s just wrath against our sin, we now look to the Lord Christ as the author and finisher of our faith… as the one who through His sacrifice turns away the wrath of God. Instead of some regal centralized Temple, Christ is now our Temple and whenever we assemble as God’s people in the name of the Lord Christ there God receives our Worship. The High Priestly Aaronic line and its necessity has ended and Christ is now our Great High Priest who gives us entry into God’s presence. Because that End has come it is no longer necessary to please God with animal sacrifice as Christ is now our eternal lamb of God and through Him we receive God’s favor.
When Christ speaks of the End then here, he is not speaking of the End of the Cosmos but the End of the Old Covenant age, and that End has indeed come. Continuing to look for the End that Christ speaks of in Mark 13 would be as ridiculous as a 70 year old Grandmother looking for the end of her virginity. That End has come and gone and so has the End that Christ speaks of here.
As the Church we do ourselves a grave disservice by be futurist in our eschatology.
Signs of the End
False Prophets
5 And Jesus began to say to them, “See that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.
The reality of False prophets throughout History is ubiquitous. No less during this time.
Acts 5:36 — Gamaliel speaking mentions two such men,
36 For before these days Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. 37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered.
Acts 8 likewise tells us of another,
9 But there was a man named Simon, who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great. 10 They all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is the power of God that is called Great.” 11 And they paid attention to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic.
Secular Historians likewise chronicle the rise of False Messiahs during this time. Dositheus, a Samaritan, “pretended that he was the lawgiver prophesied of by Moses.”
Indeed, the problem of False Prophets was so thick that the procurator Felix had many of them routinely gathered up and killed every day. These charlatans did then what they have always done and continue to do. They gather gullible people around them who want to follow a Messiah. Well might we expect the Lord Christ to warn His disciples against such deluded con men.
It is NOT the false prophets in 2015 that Jesus was warning about though they exist aplenty. It was the false prophets between His death and His judgment coming in AD 70.
Warfare
7 And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
In the Annals of Tacitus, covering the period from AD 14 to Nero’s death in AD 68 we read of him recording,
“disturbances in Germany,”
“Commotions in Africa”
“Commotions in Thrace”
“Insurrections in Gaul”
“Intrigues among the Parthians”
“The war in Britain”
“The war in Armenia”
Josephus writes of the commonality of war,
“I have omitted to give an exact account of them, because they were well known by all… yet for the sake of the connection of matters, and that my History may not be incoherent, I have just touched upon everything briefly.”
It was not the wars of 2015 that the Lord Christ was referring to when He spoke of the coming End but the wars between His death and the overturn of the Temple’s Stones.
Famine — Josephus
Book V, Chapter I, Section 4 (Entire)
The Destruction Of A Vast Quantity Of Corn That Led To Famine During The Siege
In another section we read of the famine,
The madness of the seditious did also increase together with their famine, and both those miseries were every day inflamed more and more; for there was no corn which any where appeared publicly, but the robbers came running into, and searched men’s private houses; and then, if they found any, they tormented them, because they had denied they had any; and if they found none, they tormented them worse, because they supposed they had more carefully concealed it. The indication they made use of whether they had any or not was taken from the bodies of these miserable wretches; which, if they were in good case, they supposed they were in no want at all of food; but if they were wasted away, they walked off without searching any further; nor did they think it proper to kill such as these, because they saw they would very soon die of themselves for want of food.
But we likewise hear of Famine in the New Testament which was all written by AD 70 and the destruction of the Temple.
27 Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. 28 And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius).29 So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers[a] living in Judea.
Tacitus speaks of other Famines in AD 51
“This year witnessed many prodigies (signs or omens)… including repeated Earthquakes,… further portents were seen in shortage of corn, resulting in famine.”
The Lord Christ mentions wars and famines together and rightly so for as we know war and famine are root and fruit.
It was not the famines of 2015 that the Lord Christ was referring to when He spoke of the coming End but the famines between His death and the overturn of the Temple’s Stones.
Earthquakes
There will be earthquakes in various places;
Notice Christ doesn’t say, “There will be more earthquakes than usual.” He merely says, There will be earthquakes in various places
And we see that,
Two Earthquakes mentioned in Matthew’s Gospel
27:54 When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said,“Truly this was the Son[a] of God!”
28:2 And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.
Paul’s imprisonment ended via Earthquake
Acts 16:26 — and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened.
Also we find in chronicled history that 3 earthquakes occurred prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. There we also quakes in Crete, Smyrna, Miletus, Chios, Samos, Laodicea, Hierapolis, Colosse, Campania, Rome, Pompeii and Judea.
Josephus describes a Richter busting quake in Judea “that the constitution of the universe was confounded for the destruction of men.”
Plumptre, in his commentary on Matthew writes,
“Perhaps no period in the world’s history has ever been so marked by these convulsions as that which intervenes between the Crucifixion and the destruction of Jerusalem.”
It was not the earthquakes of 2015 that the Lord Christ was referring to when He spoke of the coming End but the quakes between His death and the overturn of the 1st century Temple’s Stones…. those stones and that Temple He is speaking of.
Conclusion
Now what is the conclusion of all this. Is the conclusion, “Whew, Jesus already came back so I don’t have to worry”?
Christ did come in Judgment in AD 70 but He is coming again once He has made all His enemies His footstool.
The conclusion of the matter should be about the Lord Christ’s Kingdom work. We are not living in a time when “the End .. The End is near. We are living in a time when the nations yet need to be discipled. We are living in a time when the message must still go out that all men everywhere must repent.
Our mindset isn’t one of holding out waiting for the Lord Christ to snatch us out of a descending gloom and doom. Our mindset is one of “occupy until I return.” Our mindset is not defeatist … not “the Anti-Christ is going to get us.” Our mindset is to take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ. Our mindset is to be part of the Army, before which, the Gates of Hell will not prevail.”
Our mindset is not, “if the war doesn’t get us, the Famine might and if the famine doesn’t get us the earthquake might.” Our mindset to speak up the finished work of the Lord Christ that the glory of the Lord will cover the Earth as the waters cover the sea. Our mindset is to remind people of the Lordship of Jesus Christ and that they should have compassion on themselves by bowing the knee now as opposed to bowing the knee later.
