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

 

 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 may 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, we were given the last part of Christ's final sermon, a great indictment of the corruption in the temple and among the scribes and Pharisees:   "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 father's 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."  My study Bible notes that Christ's prophecy of the destruction of the temple was fulfilled in AD 70, when the temple was destroyed by the Romans.   This prophesy proved vividly true, as Roman soldiers believed there was gold between the stones of the temple.  All that remained was one retaining wall, long known as the Wailing Wall, today more commonly called 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?"  My study Bible notes here that 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 Revelation).  Christ's great emphasis in His response to the disciples is on watchfulness and the practice of virtue -- rather than on the construction of timetables of things that have not yet happened.  Here in Matthew's account, the end is described as encompassing first the initial sorrows, then the great tribulation, and finally the coming of the Son of Man.  The period of the great tribulation, my study Bible remarks, includes the entire Christian era.  It is not limited only to the final years before Christ's return.

 

And Jesus answered and said to them:  "Take heed that no one deceives you.  For may will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many."  Christ gives the greatest priority to warnings against deception.  Of particular significance is His warning against following a false Christ.  Jesus will stress this repeatedly; see also verses 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 in the verses that follow we understand He includes subsequent wars also.  My study Bible comments that wars are not a sign of the imminent end, but rather 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."  Here is a virtual list of things that characterize the period of history since Christ's Incarnation; let us understand that it is borne out in the history of the Church and the faithful.   But note that Christ's warnings are given in order to convey the message of endurance in faith through difficulties and disasters, that "he who endures to the end shall be saved."  My study Bible comments that all these calamities and all this opposition cannot stop the spread of the gospel.  Indeed, it says, 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 (in the Siege of Jerusalem, AD 70), they could not prevail over twelve Jews unarmed with anything except the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

Jesus names many disasters that befall humankind, most of which any one of us has likely seen in our lifetimes.  There are human, man-made disasters and also natural disasters.  But even the natural disasters such as famines, and in some cases even earthquakes, can be the result of human action.  But these are just "the beginning of sorrows" in Jesus' prophesy of the times in which we live.  But then He speaks of tribulation, in which the faithful will be killed, and hated for His name's sake.   There are those in the Church who will be offended, betray one another, and hate one another.  He speaks again of false prophets and deceit -- and of the lawlessness that will abound, with the result that the love of many will grow cold.  All of these things we may think we see or have seen.  But the key, to my way of thinking, in Christ's warning is that "he who endures to the end will be saved."  He preaches to us watchfulness and endurance, which amount to virtually the same thing, because our endurance is not possible without watchfulness.  We need to be alert to deception and alert to when the disasters and myriad distractions around us start to veer us off our course,  taking away the love of God in our hearts so that we grow cold to the things on which we must build our lives.  He virtually assures the disciples that into the life of the Church and of the faithful all of these things will come, but we are to watch and know what we are to be about.  We are, above all, to endure through it.  That is, to endure in our faith and the practice of our faith, the carrying out of His commands, of love of God and love of neighbor, as best we can.  These are the things in which we must endure and which we must pursue.  We are to remember what is the "blessed life" He teaches us in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), and all the ways He teaches us to be His disciples.  We have to hold fast to what it is that makes us salt and light, and reflect that light and God's glory back into the world (Matthew 5:13-16).  Throughout the difficulties, for over so many centuries since Christ's Incarnation, this is what the saints and the faithful of the Church have done, under any and all circumstances.  There is one saint I will take as an example who is inspirational to me.  She is St. Philothei of Athens, a woman who lived in the 16th century in Athens, Greece.  She lived in a time of oppressive Ottoman rule over Greece's mostly Christian citizens.   At a young age she became a very wealthy widow and devoted herself to monastic life.  She established on her property a women's monastery, where young women were taught various crafts and skills with which they could work.  She was active in philanthropy and charity, extended outside her immediate environment.  Among other things, she was active in buying the freedom of Greeks who'd been taken as Ottoman slaves, especially women taken to harems.  She took in and hid fleeing slaves, many of them women who were pregnant.  She spent extensive monies for bribes and ransoms for such people, and was heavily taxed and fined.  Her monasteries were plundered and agricultural lands destroyed.  For her work in hiding and smuggling out women who sought refuge in her monasteries, her fame grew and so did animosity against her.  She was beaten and imprisoned and eventually released.  Finally, four mercenaries broke into her monastery during an evening vigil and beat her severely; after a lengthy attempt at recuperation she died of her injuries, a martyr for faith.  Today much of central Athens remains a part of her legacy, and her bones are enshrined in the Metropolitan cathedral.  There, too, one may also find remnants of the chains of St. Paul, another reminder that in the endurance of our faith, we are free even in the face of the tribulations of the world and all the things that would enslave us.  Let us set these extraordinary examples before us, and understand that to endure is to truly live our faith and hang on to its priceless, matchless value, its love and light.  Notice that Jesus finishes by saying that "this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations."  Let us remember, also, that we witness by living our faith every day, and enduring in so doing.