What will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?

 Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of 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 our current readings, Jesus is in Jerusalem, and it is Holy Week.  He has made His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, cleansed the temple, and engaged in confrontation, questioning, and testing by the various parties of the  leadership, with His own challenging responses.  (See the readings from Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.)   Jesus' final public sermon took place in the temple, and our readings of that sermon began on Monday, and continued on Tuesday.  Yesterday, we read the final words of His sermon:   "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 then 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 I 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 of 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."  This is a prophecy of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.  It was fulfilled in AD 70, when the temple was destroyed by the Romans.  To really understand the impact of Jesus' statements, one would have to know what a splendid and magnificent structure the temple was.  It was considered one of the seven wonders of the world, and the product of one of the most ambitious builders in history, Herod the Great, also known as Herod the Builder.  The temple already stood, but Herod had massively expanded its base, and embellished it with many beautiful additions that made it the masterpiece of his many projects, the impressive standard he wished to leave of his rule.    At the time of its destruction at the Siege of Jerusalem, many of the stones were quite literally thrown down, as it was believed that there was gold between the stones.  All that remained was a small part of one retaining wall of the temple mount, the Western Wall.  It became known for centuries as the Wailing Wall.  It remains the holiest place Jews are permitted to pray.

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."  In the text of the Gospels, the end of the age and Jesus' second return are mingled with the destruction of the temple.  There is no precise chronology that can be understood in the entirety of Scriptural description of end times (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).  Jesus' emphasis is always on watchfulness and the practice of virtue.  His telling discourages the construction of timetables of things that haven't happened.  Here in these verses He is describing initial sorrows.  In the following verses He will speak of the great tribulation, which my study bible says describes the entire Christian era and is not limited to the final years before His return.   After this period, the Son of Man will return.  Here Jesus emphasizes in particular that His followers are not to be deceived, and gives warning against following false Christs.  There were in fact many false Messiahs who would come in this immediate period.  My study bible suggests that the wars here refer first to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, but certainly includes subsequent wars.  They're not a sign of the imminent end, but rather the opposite -- that the end is not yet (see 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3).  The things He describes here 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."  My study bible points out that all these calamities and opposition can't stop the spread of the gospel.  The persecutions against the Church often increase the number of souls being converted.  Chrysostom marvels that while the Romans subdued countless Jews in a political uprising, they couldn't prevail over twelve Jews armed with anything but the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus leaves the disciples not with a glorious material kingdom, but a world filled with troubles:  wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes.  He promises betrayals, hatred, and false prophets -- and that the love of many will grow cold.  What He asks them for is endurance.  That is, the capacity for watchfulness and persistence, knowing what they are to be about, fulfilling their mission as His disciples.  This is far from the long-imagined and hoped-for Messiah who would restore the fortunes and the greatness of the kingdom of Israel.  Rather than the glorification of such a magnificent temple, Jesus prophesies the destruction of the temple -- such a destruction that there is not one stone that will be left standing upon another, but rather thrown down.  So, we need to ask this incredible question:  What kind of Messiah is He?  What is this He is promising them?  Wars, pestilences, famines, persecution, betrayal, the destruction of the temple -- and a tribulation in the midst of which His Church will expand and grow, the gospel message will go out to the world.  That's the promise.  And moreover, there is no distinct timetable here, except perhaps when He will offer (at the end of this discourse) that this generation shall not pass away until all these things have happened (24:34), truly predicting the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.  Our Messiah does not sugarcoat anything, He gives it all to us "straight," without embellishment.  We live in a world that is imperfect, where there is evil that will do what it can to withstand the gospel and deny its message.  There are troubles that will come and will abound.  Certainly for the Christians of the Middle East and in Africa, this is becoming more and more true in the present time.  But what is most important is the struggle for alertness, awareness.  That is, that we keep our minds and hearts focused on the mission, no matter what is going on around ourselves.  In the West, many people speak about a post-Christian era.  Young people don't necessarily know anything about faith, nor understand the message of Christ, or are capable of distinguishing His message from the many others that fill up the various forms of media available.  I would venture to suggest that most people may not be aware of the roots of the values of humanity and international law and human rights that are found in the message of Jesus Christ.  It is into this world that we receive His instructions about our own conduct in His absence.  We are to be alert, and to take care not to be deceived!  We are not to be troubled, for He has told us in advance that all these things must pass.  We are to endure to the end.  And we take hope and joy in His message, in the sending of the Holy Spirit, in our understanding of our faith and God's love for us.  He has preached much earlier in chapter 5 of Matthew's Gospel, in the great Sermon on the Mount, that we are the light of the world, and it is to all His disciples that He has said to "let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."  (See 5:14-16.)   We have the mission, and it's a good and worthy job, though we live in an imperfect world filled with sophistry and deception.   What is the truth that makes us free?