Bible critics claim that some of the predictions Jesus made didn't happen, so they say if He was a prophet, He was a false prophet. Dr. R.C. Sproul answers the critics next on Renewing Your Mind. Welcome to the Lord's Day edition of our program.
We're glad you're with us as we continue Dr. R.C. Sproul's sermon series from The Gospel of Mark. In chapter 9, Jesus seems to have predicted that He would return in a certain timeframe, so was His prophecy false? Dr. Sproul will explain Jesus' prediction, and we will come away assured that it's not a mistake on our Savior's part.
It is the true and trustworthy Word of God. Notice that between the end of chapter 8 in which Jesus talked about the cost of discipleship and of bearing one's cross and of being exposed to suffering and rejection and death, and the actual narrative of the transfiguration, verse 1 of chapter 9 reads as follows, and He said to them, Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God present with power. Now what you have here in this verse is a prophecy, and it's a prophecy of something that will take place in the future, and it's not a future event that's going to take place according to this text two thousand years later. There is a timeframe specifically attached to this prophecy where Jesus said, Some of you who are present will not taste death, which means will not die until you see the kingdom of God present in power.
So we have this cryptic prediction about something that's going to happen. It's going to happen within the space of time of the lifetime at least of some of the disciples. When Jesus says, Some of you will not taste death, He does not say, None of you will taste death until this takes place, but He uses what we call a particular negative proposition saying that some people will not do such and such a thing, which indicates being less than a universal negative or universal affirmative, which would include all people or at least all of the group that's under discussion here. So the implication is that though some of those standing with Him listening to this prediction will not die before the prediction comes to pass, some of them will die before the prediction comes to pass. Now the first question that we have here is to what event is Jesus talking when He makes the prediction that some people will not die before they see the coming of the kingdom of God in power?
What's He referring to? What is this coming of the kingdom in power all about? Now before I try to answer that question, let me raise the ante on this text and show you that it's linked closely to two other texts in the New Testament that are equally or even more controversial. Let me read first of all from Matthew chapter 10. Let me start at verse 21. Now a brother will deliver a brother to death, to the father his child, and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death, and you will be hated by all for My name's sake.
But he who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. Notice the context in which Jesus is speaking here is similar to Mark's in that He predicts suffering and affliction for His followers. And now here He says in Matthew, if they persecute you in this city, then flee to another city.
And obviously, if they persecute you in that city, then go on to another city. And then here comes the climactic statement. For assuredly I say to you, you will not have gone through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes. Now again, we have a future prediction of something, which is introduced by a time frame reference. In this case, He refers not till the time that they will see the kingdom of God coming in power, but rather He speaks of the Son of Man coming. And now instead of saying some of you will not taste death before you see this future event, He says now you will not go through all of the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes.
Now you're beginning to feel the problem here. The first aspect of this problem has to do with again a time frame reference where obviously it's not going to take the disciples two thousand years to go through the cities of Israel. They accomplished that within the first generation of Christian missionary activity to the cities and villages of Israel.
And so we could say of that text that some of those who were sent out also would not taste death until that event came to pass. Now the most controversial of all with respect to time frame references of the New Testament comes later in Matthew 24, which is Matthew's version of what we call the Olivet Discourse, a discussion that Jesus had near the end of His life with His disciples on the Mount of Olives, and that discourse is contained in all of the synoptic gospels and has become the most controversy of all. It begins when Jesus makes a future prophecy when He looks at the temple that is standing there, and He said that temple will be destroyed, not one stone will be left upon another. Jerusalem will be destroyed and trampled underfoot by the Gentiles. And when He makes this prediction of the destruction of the temple and of the destruction of Jerusalem, which was a prediction of the most shocking magnitude available, that the Jews of Jesus' day thought if there was anything unthinkable, it would be that the temple would be destroyed and that Jerusalem would be left desolate. After all, Jerusalem was the holy city.
It was Mount Zion. It was the place of the coming of the people of God for their King. And so Jesus shocks them by saying the temple is going to be destroyed and the cities are going to be destroyed. And then Jesus, while He's shocking His disciples, they ask Him a question, and the question is straightforward. It's a question you would ask, Lord, when will these things happen? Now that's a time question.
When? And so Jesus gives an elaborate answer to that, and I'm not going to go into all of this or the Olivet Discourse this morning because we'll face it again later as we study the book of Mark, but let's just let me turn your attention to part of it where He says in verse 29 of chapter 24, Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from heaven, the powers of the heaven will be shaken, then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with the great sound of a trumpet. They will gather together His elect from the four winds from one heaven to the other. Now learn this parable from the fig tree.
When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near at the doors. Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.
Now maybe you still haven't felt the weight of the problem I'm setting before you this morning. That text that I've just read is the text that is used more often by skeptics and by higher critical scholars in the academic world to deny the credibility of Jesus and to deny the credibility of the New Testament. When Bertrand Russell wrote his book, Why I Am Not a Christian, he gave us his number one argument for not believing in Jesus this text in the New Testament because he said, as the skeptics say, Jesus clearly predicted His return to this world within one generation, which in Jewish terms is forty years. And here's what's striking about this particular text and the prophecy in the Mount of Olives is that Jesus with astonishing accuracy predicts the future destruction of the temple, the destruction of Jerusalem, which takes place just about forty years after the prediction with the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman invaders. So if there's ever a future prediction in the New Testament that would prove the truth of the Bible and that would prove the deity of Christ, it's this prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem which took place exactly and precisely as Jesus prophesied.
But what happened? When He is predicting these events of the temple and of the city and the disciples ask Him when, He links to the answer of when the coming of the Son of Man and says that this coming and whatever coming Jesus is talking about there, He said, assuredly this generation will not pass away until ponte tauta, all of these things will come to pass. So you have three critical passages in the New Testament that set forth future events, and they all have a timeframe within the first generation of believers.
Now the first thing we don't know. We don't know for sure that all three of these passages that I've just talked to you about are referring to the same historical event. Notice that in the passage I read from Mark 1, Jesus said that some of you will not taste death until you see the kingdom of God coming in power. In Matthew 10, He says, you will not go through all of the cities of Israel until you see the Son of Man come. And in the third one, this generation will not pass away until all of these things come to pass, including the destruction of Jerusalem and the coming of Christ.
Now do you see the problem? The weight of New Testament skepticism is this. Jesus predicted His return in the first generation of believers. Yes, the temple was destroyed. Yes, Jerusalem was destroyed, but Jesus didn't come back. Therefore, if He was a prophet, He was a false prophet. And not only is His prediction not true, but the New Testament documents cannot be trusted either. So what do you do with that?
Well, if you would look at the gymnastics that people use to get around these problems, it's unbelievable. The standard argument among evangelicals as to what Jesus meant here was He said, this generation will pass away. He meant this kind of unbelief will not pass away, that there will be people like you, unbelievers like you in every generation between now until when I come back at the end of the age. And so that's all He meant by that. It was not an answer directly to the question when. Well, if that's the answer to that dilemma, that involves a twisting of that phrase, this generation, in a way that's utterly foreign to its usage in the New Testament.
If you're going to be serious about that text, and if you do believe that the Bible is the Word of God, then you've got to believe. What did those disciples understand when Jesus said that? He said, this generation, that's forty years. This is going to take place in the next forty years. I can't tell you what day, I can't tell you what hour, but certainly it's going to be within the next forty or so years, this generation. Which leads me to conclude that what He's talking about here is not His coming at the end of time, not His what we call the second coming, but His judgment coming on Israel that does happen within that framework of forty years with the destruction of the temple and the destruction of Jerusalem.
But I'm going to leave all of this course aside for now and come back to these other two texts. Clearly Jesus says to His disciples in Matthew 10, you're not going to go through every city in Israel till the Son of Man comes. So again, He's putting a first century time for some kind of coming of the Son of Man. You can't possibly, in my judgment, be referring to His final coming at the end of the age. But now back to Mark, where Mark says, some of you will not taste death until you see the kingdom of God manifested in power.
Now let's ask this question. What is Jesus talking about here? Well, He doesn't say, some of you will not taste death until I return. He doesn't say, some of you will not taste death until you see Me coming on clouds of glory. All He's saying here is that some of you will not taste death until you see the kingdom of God made manifest in power. And so how have commentators treated this prediction in church history?
Many of them argue that since Mark places this prediction right before his description of the transfiguration and the transfiguration was the most dazzling manifestation of the presence of the kingdom of God in glory and power that occurred during Jesus' earthly ministry prior to His resurrection, that obviously the editorial reason why Mark places it here is that Mark is saying he's giving a prediction of the transfiguration. Maybe that's why Jesus said that six days before the transfiguration. But something puzzles me about that.
If I put my Lieutenant Colombo hat on, you know, I say, you know, I've got some little loose ends here that I've got to tie up together. It's one thing I don't understand. Why would Jesus say, some of you won't taste death? Is He saying, don't worry, you're not going to die. All of you aren't going to die in this next week.
It's overkill, isn't it? It doesn't make any sense for Him to put a timeframe in which some of those people standing there will not die if He's talking about something that's going to take place within the next seven days with no intervening plague or war breaking out that would claim the lives of some of His disciples. Others have looked at this text and say, well this refers to the resurrection, because the resurrection certainly demonstrates the manifestation of Jesus and His kingdom in power, even more powerfully than the transfiguration.
However, the same problem was there. None of those who were there at this moment died between this announcement and the resurrection. And even the resurrection is too soon ahead to have Jesus saying, some of you will not die before you see the kingdom in coming in power. The next favorite interpretation of the text is that when the disciples really saw the kingdom coming in power was on the day of Pentecost. When they received power from heaven, they saw the dove coming down, and the church was empowered as the presence of the kingdom of God.
And that could be what the reference is, but again I'm puzzled about this reference that some of you will not taste death. It still seems to me too soon to put it in the timeframe of life where some of them will not have died. But if Jesus is talking here about the manifestation of the kingdom of God in power coming, when the last vestiges of Jewish resistance to the breakthrough of the kingdom of God that Jesus has been encountering all through the Gospel of Mark, happens when the temple is destroyed and Jerusalem is laid bare. In 70 A.D. for the first time, the Christian church was now understood as a distinct entity from Judaism.
It was no longer considered a subset or a sect within Judaism. The triumph of the Messiah's church was made visible and manifest in power with the judgment of God that came to Jerusalem in 70 A.D. And some of those who were present when Jesus was talking about the coming manifestation of the power of the kingdom did in fact die between His announcements and the coming of the kingdom in power in A.D. 70. Now, let me end this by saying maybe that's what Jesus was talking about, but I don't know for sure. But I know if you're wrestling with these timeframe passages in the New Testament, you don't need to wrestle anymore if you take seriously the fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy concerning the temple and concerning the city of Jerusalem. One thing I know for certain, that the Word of God does not fail, that Jesus was truth incarnate. And when He said that something was going to happen in a certain timeframe, then what do I know?
I know what happened within that timeframe. And if my coming to that conclusion makes me challenge some of the constructs of theology in our day, so be it. Because where we go for truth is to the mouth of Jesus. Well, this passage from the Gospel of Mark is difficult to understand, so we are thankful for Dr. Sproul's exposition of it here today on Renewing Your Mind. We need trusted theologians like Dr. Sproul to help us navigate passages like this, and our resource offer today will bring clarity to your study of the entire Gospel of Mark. When you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, we will send you R.C.
's commentary on this gospel. It's a beautiful hardbound volume with more than 400 pages, and you can request it when you go online to renewingyourmind.org. One of the many ways you can listen to our program is on RefNet. It's our free 24-hour internet radio station. Every day we provide new sermons and teaching series from trusted teachers and pastors. You can listen to Drs.
Sinclair Ferguson, Derek Thomas, Stephen Lawson, John MacArthur, and, of course, Dr. R.C. Sproul. Listen for free right now at RefNet.fm. You can also download the free RefNet app. Well, next Sunday, Dr. Sproul will give us more insight into this passage from Mark 9, and we hope you'll join us for another lesson on the Transfiguration here on Renewing Your Mind. .
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