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Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings in the temple. And Jesus said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down."
Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?" And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.
"Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."
- Matthew 24:1-14
In yesterday's reading, Jesus completed His final sermon, given at the temple in Jerusalem. This sermon began with Monday's reading (Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted), and Tuesday's (You pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith). Yesterday, we read its conclusion: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"
Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings in the temple. And Jesus said to them, "Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down." My study bible says that "Christ's prophecy of the destruction of the temple was fulfilled in AD 70, when the temple was destroyed by the Romans."
Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?" My study bible has a long note on the passages to follow: "The Scriptures describe the end times in a variety of ways, so that no precise chronology can be determined (see Daniel 7-12; Mark 13; Luke 21; 1 Corinthians 15:51-55; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-10; and the Book of Revelation). The Lord's emphasis is on watchfulness and the practice of virtue rather than on constructing timetables of things that have not yet happened. In Matthew's account here, the end is described as encompassing (1) the initial sorrows (vv. 4-14 [today's reading]), (2) the great tribulation (vv. 15-28), and (3) the coming of the Son of Man (vv. 29-31). The period of the great tribulation includes the entire Christian era and is not limited to the final years before Christ's return."
And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many." A note tells us here that Jesus' warnings against deception are what are given the most emphasis here. "Of particular importance is the warning against following a false Christ, which Jesus stresses again in vv. 11, 23-27."
"And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet." My study bible says that the wars here refer "first and foremost to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, but certainly include subsequent wars. Wars are not a sign of the imminent end, but of the opposite -- that the end is not yet (see 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3)."
"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come." A note says, "All these calamities and all this opposition cannot stop the spread of the gospel, and indeed, persecutions against the Church often increase the number of souls being converted. St. John Chrysostom marvels that while the Romans subdued countless Jews in a political uprising, they could not prevail over twelve Jews unarmed with anything except the gospel of Jesus Christ."
The challenge we so often face seems to be that of our own expectations, and what they set up for us to believe. Who would have thought it was possible for this great temple -- let alone the entire city of Jerusalem -- to be destroyed, even unto leaving "not one stone" upon another? One has to imagine the temple as it was, a great building project of Herod the Great who was, in fact, called "the Great Builder" because of his expansive projects. Herod, ruling just prior to his son Antipas who was by this time the tetrarch of Galilee, expanded the Second Temple to include immense ambitious building projects, such as porticoes and colonnades and all manner of beautiful, even magnificent, architecture. But Jesus' prediction was quite literally true. In the year AD 70, in what is known as the siege of Jerusalem, the Romans destroyed both the temple and the city. There was a rumor that gold lay between the stones of the temple, and so "not one stone" was left upon another. All that was left was a retaining wall, now known as the Western Wall, or the "Wailing Wall," as Jews have come through the centuries to mourn and pray at what was left of the temple. It is something quite "awesome" to consider that these predictions made by Jesus would occur within the span of a generation, and also at the same time, despite so many calamities and persecutions, the gospel would go out to all the world, via twelve Jews, the Apostles of Christ. In this upheaval, in a time in which the world of certainty is turned upside-down, it is faith that prevails. Jesus' emphasis on faith, perseverance, watchfulness and virtue, and particularly endurance, becomes the hallmark of what we must always remember. What good does it do us to construct some sort of timetable? It is every moment of our lives that count, every challenge, every second of that "good fight" we wage in the struggle of prayer and even of love, that really are emphasized and important. It's our watchfulness that counts here. We hear of wars and rumors of wars constantly in our world today at this moment. Famines, pestilences, and earthquakes can now be found anytime one opens a computer or listens to the news in our now-globalized world -- in an instant, we may know what is happening elsewhere at all times. Through it all we are to be reminded that our job is to endure and to be watchful, to live as He has taught us to live, and to grow in our faith. Let us remember, at all times, how we are blessed with this gospel, and how we are taught to live it.
