He who endures to the end shall be saved

 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

Over the past three days, we have read Jesus' final sermon, delivered in the temple at Jerusalem.  (See Monday's and Tuesday's readings for the first two parts of this sermon.)  In yesterday's reading, Jesus preached, "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 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 prophecy of the destruction of the temple was fulfilled in AD 70, when the temple was destroyed by the Romans.  True to the prophesy, not one stone of the temple was left upon another.  Only a small portion of an outer retaining wall was to remain, known as the Western Wall.

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."   From these verses through verse 35, which we'll read over the course of the next two readings, Jesus speaks of the end times.  My study bible says that as the Scriptures describe the end times in a variety of ways, there is 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).  But Christ's emphasis here is plain for us to understand and take to heart:  He stresses watchfulness and the practice of virtue, rather than constructing timetables of things that haven't yet happened.  In Matthew, the end is described as encompassing the initial sorrows (today's reading), the great tribulation, and the coming of the Son of Man.  My study bible tells us that the period of the great tribulation includes the entire Christian era, and is not limited to the final years before Christ's return.  Here in our passage, the warnings against deception are given great emphasis by Jesus.  He particularly warns us against following a false Christ, and He repeats this warning twice (vv. 11, 23-27).  The wars here, according to my study bible, refer first and foremost to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, but they also include subsequent wars.  Wars, it notes, are not a sign of the imminent end, but of the opposite -- that the end is not yet (see 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3).

"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 says here that 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.  It adds that 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.

My study bible makes it clear that we still live in the era that Christ is speaking about in today's reading.  Indeed, "end times" really lives on a kind of spectrum, and is not limited to one set of circumstances at a particularly denoted time.  It is the age in which we live, initiated by Christ's Incarnation into the world, that is the true "end time."  True to God's own timetable and perspective, the age in which we live manifests its "end times" with echoes of Christ's words throughout the time of the end and the period in which we live, in which "this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations."  Jesus speaks of the difficulties of being one of His followers, the tribulations that will follow.  It's not just persecution He warns us about, but also of false prophets in our own midst, and even betrayal, hatred, offenses -- even lawlessness, and that "the love of many will grow cold."  What a terrible scenario!  One might wonder how He could preach such things to His followers and still have a following.    Quite a different perspective than market research would indicate will draw followers.  But His word to us is to endure to the end, and that takes faith.  It takes our ability to bear our own crosses, even those things that are neither fair nor just, that may be placed upon us by a hostile world that doesn't accept nor understand Him.  The cross we bear may be a kind of unjust humiliation like His.  But He calls us to faith, forbearance, and discernment.   We're to be watchful, above all else, and to live in preparation for His return.