The Beginning Of The End
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
MARK 13:1-8
What can lead us astray as we look forward to Jesus’ second coming?
This is the most difficult chapter in Mark for the interpreter, telling as it does of strange, future events and portents. A comment on the grandeur of the newly built temple prompted Jesus’ prophecy that this great structure would be razed to the ground. The deeper implication of the prophecy is that the temple and all it stood for had had its day, but how much did the disciples understand then? When Jesus was alone they asked two questions. First, when would the temple be destroyed? Second, what would be the indication when “these things are all to be accomplished”? This second question seems to refer to the coming of the end of the present age (cf. Matthew 24:3), and suggests that the disciples were associating the destruction of the temple with the end of the age.
Many scholars doubt whether the discourse that now follows was actually spoken by Jesus on this one occasion, and it is possible that sayings spoken at different times have been gathered together (as in the chapter of parables or in the great discourse in Matthew) to give a fuller conspectus of his teaching on this theme. The first part of his reply (13:5-8) was a warning not to be led astray by events which suggested that the end had already come or that it was never going to come.
On the one hand, false teachers would lead the people astray. The phrase “in my name” suggests that they would either appear as representatives of Jesus or even pretend to be him. They would say, “I am he!,” which could mean “I am the Messiah” or “I am God”; Simon Magus made claims like these (Acts 8:9f.). They would persuade men that the end had come, and turn their minds away from Jesus.
On the other hand, the outbreak of wars and natural disasters could tempt the faithful to believe that God had forgotten them and that the end would never come. Such events, however, were part of the “programme,” and must be seen as the travail which precedes the joy of birth.
We have seen the destruction of the temple, but close on two millennia have passed since then and the end has not yet come. The fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 is theologically part of the end, and yet the end still tarries. Throughout this chapter the events of AD 70 and the events of the “end of the age” (Matthew 24:3) are closely woven together by a prophetic foreshortening which links essentially similar and related events to each other. The reason for this may become clearer further on in the chapter. For the moment, the warning in 13:7 is as relevant for us as it was for Jesus’ first hearers.