Mark 13:1-2, 14-20, 9-13 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Mark 13 Intro and 1-2, 14-20, 9-13

• Mark 13 Intro
• This is one of the most difficult chapters in the NT for modern readers to understand. That is because it is one of the most Jewish chapters in the Bible. From beginning to end it is thinking in terms of Jewish history and Jewish ideas
• The difficulty about the doctrine of the second coming is that today people are apt either to completely disregard it or to be so completely unbalanced about it that it becomes the only doctrine  of the Christian faith. It may be that if we study this chapter with some care we shall come to a sane and correct view about this doctrine
• The Day of the Lord
  • This whole chapter must be read with one thing in mind
  • The Jews never doubted that they were the chosen people, and they never doubted that one day they would occupy the place in the world which the chose people, as they saw it, deserved and were bound to have in the end
  • They had long since abandoned the idea that they could ever win that place by human means, and they were confident that in the end God would directly intervene in history and win it for them
  • The day of God’s intervention was the day of the Lord
  • Before that day of the Lord, there would be a time of terror and trouble when the world would be shaken to its foundations and judgment would come
  • But it would be followed by the new world and the new age and the new glory
    • In one senes this idea is the product of unconquerable optimism
      • The Jews were quite certain that God would break in
    • In another sense it was the product of bleak pessimism
      • It was based on the idea that this world was so utterly bad that only its complete destruction and the emergence of a new would would suffice
    • They did not look for reformation. They looked for a recreating of the entire scheme of things
    • OT References
      • Amos 5:16-8, 20
      • Isaiah 13:6, 9-10
      • Joel 2:1-2, 30-31
    • Between the OT and NT there was a time when the Jews knew no freedom. It was only natural that their hopes and dreams of the day of the Lord would become even more vivid
    • In that time a kind of popular religious literature sprang up
      • The writings which this literature consisted of were called the Apocalypses (An unveiling)
      • These books were dreams and visions of what would happen when the day of the Lord came and in the terrible time immediately before it
      • They were never meant to be taken prosaically as maps of the future and timetables of events to come
  • Different Strands
    • Here Mark collects Jesus’ sayings about the future
      • Even with a cursory reading, with no special knowledge, shows that though all these sayings were about the future, they were not all about the same things
    • 5 Different Strands
      • There are the prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem
        • 1-2 and 14-20
      • There is the warning of persecution to come
        • 9-13
      • There are warnings of the dangers of the last days
        • 3-6, 21-22
      • There are warnings of the second coming
        • 7-8, 24-27
        • The imagery of the day of the Lord and of the second coming are inextricably mixed up. It had to be so, because no one could possibly know what would happen in either case
        • The only pictures Jesus could use about His second coming were those which prophets and apocalyptists had already used about the day of the Lord. They are not meant to be taken literally. They are meant as impressionistic pictures, as seer’s visions, designed to impress upon people the greatness of that even when it should come
      • There are the warnings of the necessity to be on the watch
        • 28-37
  • This chapter will make far more sense if we remember these various strands in it and remember that every strand is unfolded in language and imagery which go back to the OT and apocalyptic pictures of the day of the Lord
• Mark 13:1-2
• As he was going out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Teacher, look! What massive stones! What impressive buildings!” 2 Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another—all will be thrown down.”
  • The Temple which Herod built was one of the wonders of the world
    • It was begun in 20-19 B.C. and in the time of Jesus was not yet completely finished
    • It was built on the top of Mount Moriah (Abraham sacrifices Isaac). Instead of leveling off the summit of the mountain, a kind of vast platform was formed by raising up walls of massive masonry and enclosing the whole area. On these walls a platform was laid, strengthened by piers which distributed the weight of the superstructure. 
    • Josephus tells us that some of these stones were 40 feet long by 12 feet high by 18 feet wide. It would be some of these vast stones that moved the disciples to such wondering amazement
  • The most magnificent entrance to the Temple was at the south-west angle. Here between the city and the Temple hill there stretched the Tyropoeon Valley
    • A marvelous bridge spanned the valley. Each arch of the bridge was 41 1/2 feet and there were stones used in the building of it which measured 24 feet long
    • The valley was over 225 feet below
    • The bridge was 50 feet wide and 354 feet long
    • It led straight into the Royal Porch, which consisted of a double row of Corinthian pillars all 37 1/2 feet high and each one cut out of one sold block of marble
  • Of the actual Temple building itself, the holy place, Josephus writes, “Now the outward face of the Temple in its front wanted nothing that was likely to surprise men’s minds or their eyes, for it was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and, at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a very fiery splendor, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they could have done was the sun’s own rays. But this Temple appeared to strangers, when they were at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow, for, as to those parts of it which were not gilt, they were exceeding white…Of its stones, some of them for 45 cubits x 5 cubits x 6 cubits in breadth” (a cubit is about 18 inches)
  • It was all this splendor that so impressed the disciples
    • The Temple seemed the summit of human art and achievement, and seemed so vast and solid that it would stand forever
    • But Jesus made the astonishing statement that the day was coming when not one of these stones would stand upon another
    • In less than fifty years His prophecy came tragically true
• Mark 13:14-20
• 14 “When you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be” (let the reader understand), “then those in Judea must flee to the mountains. 15 A man on the housetop must not come down or go in to get anything out of his house, 16 and a man in the field must not go back to get his coat. 17 Woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days! 18 “Pray it won’t happen in winter. 19 For those will be days of tribulation, the kind that hasn’t been from the beginning of creation until now and never will be again. 20 If the Lord had not cut those days short, no one would be saved. But he cut those days short for the sake of the elect, whom he chose.
  • Jesus forecasts some of the awful terror of the siege and the final fall of Jerusalem
    • It is His warning that when the first signs of it came people ought to flee, not even waiting to pick up their clothes or to try to save their goods
    • In fact, people did precisely the opposite
      • They crowded into Jerusalem, and death came in ways that are almost too terrible to think about
  • The phrase the abomination of desolation  has its origin in the book of Daniel
    • The profanation that appalls
    • We talked about Antiochus a few weeks ago; wanting to introduce Greek thought and the Greek way of life into every culture, no matter what
    • He desecrated the Temple by offering pig’s flesh on the altar and by setting up public brothels in the sacred courts
    • Before the very Holy Place itself, he set up a statue of Zeus and ordered the Jews to worship it
    • The phrase the abomination of desolation, the profanation that appalls, originally described the pagan image and all that accompanied with which Antiochus desecrated the Temple
    • Jesus prophesies that the same kind of thing is going to happen again
    • He is saying “Some day, white soon, you will see the very incarnate power of evil rise up in a deliberate attempt to destroy the people and the Holy Place of God”. He takes the old phrase and uses it to describe the terrible things that are about to happen
  • It was in AD 70 that Jerusalem finally fell to the besieging army Titus, who was to be emperor of Rome
    • The horrors of that siege form one of the grimmest pages in history
    • The people crowded into Jerusalem from the countryside. Titus had no alternative but to starve the city into subjection. The matter was complicated by the fact that even at the terrible time there were sects and factions inside the city itself. Jerusalem was torn without and within
  • Josephus tells the story of the terrible siege
    • He says that 97,000 were take captive and 1,100,000 perished by slow starvation and the sword
    • To make it still grimmer, there were inevitable ghouls who plundered the dead bodies
    • Josephus tells grimly how when not even any herbs were available “some persons were driven to such terrible distress as to search the common sewers and old dunghill sod cattle, and to each the dung which they go there, and what they could not endure so much as to see, they now used for food.”
    • He paints a grim picture of men gnawing the leather of straps and shoes, and tells a terrible story of a woman who killed and roasted her child, and offered a share of that terrible meat to those who came seeking food
  • The prophesy that Jesus made of terrible days ahead for Jerusalem came most abundantly true. Those who crowded into the city for safety died by the 100,000, and only those who took His advice and fled to the hills were saved
• Mark 13:9-13
• 9 “But you, be on your guard! They will hand you over to local courts, and you will be flogged in the synagogues. You will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a witness to them. 10 And it is necessary that the gospel be preached to all nations. 11 So when they arrest you and hand you over, don’t worry beforehand what you will say, but say whatever is given to you at that time, for it isn’t you speaking, but the Holy Spirit. 12 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. 13 You will be hated by everyone because of my name, but the one who endures to the end will be saved.
  • Now we come to the warnings of persecution to come
    • Jesus never left His followers in any doubt that they had chosen a hard way
    • No one could claim that the conditions of Christ’s service had not been explained
  • The handing over to councils and the scourging in synagogues refer to jewish persecution
    • In Jerusalem there was the great Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the Jews, but every town and village had its local Sanhedrin. Before such local Sanhedrins the self-confessed heretics would be tried and in the synagogues they would be publicly scourged
    • The governors and kinds refer to trials before the Roman court, such as Paul faced before Felix, Festus, and Agrippa
  • It was a fact that the Christians were wonderfully strengthened in their trials
    • When we read of the trials of the martyrs, even though they were often uneducated men and women, the impression often is that it was the judges and not the Christians who were on trial
    • Their Christian faith enabled them to fear God so much that they were never afraid to stand up to anyone
  • It was true that people were even sometimes betrayed by members of their own family
    • In the early Roman Empire one of the curses was the informer
      • There were those who, in their attempts to curry favor with the authorities, would not hesitate to betray their own family and friends
    • In Hitler’s Germany a man was arrested because he stood for freedom. He endured imprisonment and torture with stoic and uncomplaining fortitude. Finally, with spirit still unbroken, he was released. Some short time afterwards he committed suicide. Many wondered why. Those who knew him well knew the reason—he had discovered that this own son was the person who had informed against him. The treachery of his own flesh and blood broke him in a way that the cruelty of his enemies was unable to achieve
    • Life becomes a hell upon earth when personal loyalties are destroyed and who love is a source of suspicion rather than trust
    • It was true that the Christian were hated
      • One Roman historian, Tacitus, talked or Christianity as an accursed superstition; another, Suetonius, called it a new and evil superstition
      • The main reason for the hatred was the way in which Christianity cut across family ties
        • The fact was that love for Christ had to come before love for father or mother, or son or daughter
      • And the matter was complicated by the way the Christians were much slandered
        • It is beyond doubt that the Jews encouraged these slanders
        • The most serious was the charge that the Christians were cannibals, a charge supported by the words of the sacrament which speak of eating Christ’s body and drinking His blood
  • In this, as in all other things, it is the one who endures to the end who is saved
    • Life is not a short, sharp sprint; It is a marathon. Life is not a single battle; it is a long campaign