The Olivet Discourse

In Mark chapter 13, Jesus predicts that the temple in Jerusalem will be toppled.

Now sometimes we can make future prognostications based upon trends that are going on currently, but there were no trends in the ancient world that would see the destruction of this magnificent building where the stones themselves would be cast down. And with that prediction, Jesus proved that He had divine knowledge. But in that same conversation with His disciples, He foretold His own return.

So the question is, why hasn't that happened yet? Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C. Sproul continues his verse-by-verse examination of the Gospel of Mark. I'm about to sail my ship this morning into troubled waters, to say the least. For as we come to chapter 13 of the Gospel according to Mark, we come now to the longest discourse of our Lord contained in this Gospel. It is Jesus' lengthy discussion about the future destruction of the temple, of the destruction of Jerusalem, and of His coming in glory at the end of the age. On the one hand, this text represents the most amazing prediction of future events that we find in the New Testament. If there is any text that should prove the divine claims of Jesus, it is this text inasmuch as He predicts without any doubt the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple years before that event came to pass.

This is predictive prophecy of the highest magnitude. And you would think that this text, more than any other, would vindicate and authenticate Jesus' claims to being the Son of God, who speaks only those things that the Father has authorized. At the same time, there is no text in the New Testament that bears more dramatic witness to the inspiration of sacred Scripture than this text because of its uncanny accuracy for predicting the future with respect to the destruction of the temple and the destruction of Jerusalem.

However, there is no New Testament text that has been used more often with higher critical tools and from the pens of skeptics, both with respect to the identity of Christ and with respect to the trustworthiness of the New Testament than this text. Well, how can that be when what Jesus said would take place did take place clearly with the destruction of the temple and the destruction of Jerusalem? Well, the problem is this, that in addition to His prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple, incorporated in this discourse was His prediction about His own coming in clouds of glory at the end of the age. And the problem is this, that as we will see when the disciples asked for the time reference of these things, Jesus here and also in Matthew's gospel makes the assertion that that generation would not pass away until all of the things included in this discourse came to pass. I think it's the most weighty problem that we have in the New Testament with respect to the truth claims of the nature of Christ and of Scripture. So when I say we're sailing into troubled waters, we are sailing into troubled waters indeed, and I'm not sure, and I have to say this up front, how to handle all of the difficulties that present themselves in the Olivet Discourse. In the critical theories of our day, much attention has been given to what has been called a postponement theology or the story of the parousia delay, that is the delay of Jesus' coming in glory, and the critical scholars say that later on in the New Testament in Paul's epistles, for example, you already begin to see the church falling back to punt.

It's fourth down. Jesus hasn't come in the timeframe that everybody expected Him to come, and so the New Testament had to revise its future expectancy of the return of Christ. Now all of that's background for the problem, and now I want us to take the time to look at the text itself, and as we do through the coming weeks when we see these problems that are so painful, I will endeavor to point them out and by God's grace give some optional ways to resolve the difficulties. Chapter 13 begins then, that as He went out of the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here. As they're leaving this place where Jesus had seen the widow give her might in the treasury and where so much of these debates had taken place, now as they're leaving and making their way to the Mount of Olives opposite the temple complex, one of the disciples turns and looks at this magnificent structure that truly was one of the wonders of the ancient world, and still in amazement at this building, which he had probably seen hundreds and hundreds of times, he says to Jesus, look at that.

Isn't that something? And that to which He directed the gaze of Jesus was not the temple built by Solomon in the Old Testament, which temple had been destroyed, but now the temple that was being rebuilt by Herod the Great. The construction of this temple had begun by Herod fifty years before Jesus was looking at us on this occasion, and it still wasn't finished. Now to give you some idea of the Herodian temple, the outer court measured five hundred by three hundred yards, not feet.

The outer court, five football fields by three football fields. The temple itself took up thirty-five acres of ground. The building we're in here this morning is situated on just slightly less than six acres that we own here, and if you can multiply that six times, not just this building, but the whole acreage by six times, you get some idea of the size of the temple. Herod was known throughout the world for his incredible construction products and for the development of what has been called ever since Herodian stone. Josephus tells us that some of the stones that made up the temple were sixty feet long.

We're talking one stone. Sixty feet long, eleven feet high, eight feet deep, each stone weighing over a million pounds. And again, some of the historians of antiquity said that the temple of Herod in Jerusalem looked like a mountain of marble decorated with gold. Now the wall of the temple, 150 feet high. The sanctuary itself was 150 feet high.

This is like thirty-three feet. It grew up more than five times, and you get the idea of the height of the interior of the sanctuary of the temple in Jerusalem. If you've ever been to Jerusalem today in the modern period, it's an incredible sight where you see the walls of Jerusalem rising out of the desert floor. At night they're illuminated with giant searchlights, and you can see that wall now that surrounds the old city is seventy-five feet high, and it takes your breath away when you look at it. And then you go inside, and you see the archeologists have dug down below the wall seventy-five more feet where they reach the base of the wall that surrounded Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. And that just blows you away when you realize what you're looking at today is only half of what was there at the time of Jesus. And so the columns that held up the portico, for example, were so large that it would take three men expanding their arms to fingertips, and three men could barely put their arms around one column.

So obviously, I don't need to tell you much more. This was an incredible building, and they're looking at this and standing in awe of what seems to be an impregnable structure that no thing imaginable could ever destroy. And so, as the disciples are in awe at this magnificent edifice, and Jesus responds and says, Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone shall be left upon another, shall not be thrown down. See those sixty feet by eight feet by eleven feet stones of a million pounds?

They're going to be crushed into the dust. Now sometimes we can make future prognostications based upon trends that are going on currently, but there were no trends in the ancient world that would allow somebody a natural prediction or prognostication that would see the destruction of this magnificent building where the stones themselves would be cast down. Indeed, in the future, history would take the full measure and magnitude of the entire power of the Roman armies to bring this prophecy to pass. Now they reach the Mount of Olives, and as He sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked Him privately. Now here's where we begin to get into some trouble, because the questions that the disciples brought to Jesus about His prediction of the destruction of the temple was this. Tell us, He said, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all of these things will be fulfilled? Now there's a phrase here that we have to take note of because it occurs throughout the Olivet Discourse, and it is the phrase, these things, talta, and the phrase, when will be the sign that all these things, talta panta, all of these things shall come to pass?

Two questions here. When and what will be the sign that it's about to happen? And so when we read the response of Jesus to this, let me ask you to do something. Try to imagine that you're one of the disciples who's just asked that question. Jesus has made a specific prediction about the destruction of the temple, and now they say, when?

That's a straightforward question, isn't it? And what will be the sign, the outward manifestation that all of this is about to happen? They're asking about the signs of the times. They're asking about the signs of the fulfillment of this prophecy, which as we will see later includes Jesus' prediction of His return in the clouds of glory. And we will see later on in the text that encompassed within the phrase, all of these things includes His prediction of His return at the end of the age, and as I said, the destruction of Jerusalem.

So let me telescope these just for a moment. If Jesus says, look, three things are going to happen. One, that this temple's going to be destroyed. Two, Jerusalem's going to be destroyed. Three, I'll be coming on the clouds of glory at the end of the age.

And the first question out of their mouths is, well, when's that? Now the standard view that you find among Christians today is that this will happen perhaps soon since so many things going on in Israel and Jerusalem now that maybe we're at that point when finally Jesus is going to return and all of these prophecies in the Olivet Discourse will be fulfilled. It's a long time past the demise of that first generation, but again, imagine yourself in the disciples' shoes and they say to Jesus, when are these things going to take place? And He says to them, not one generation will pass away until all of these things are fulfilled.

What would you think He meant? Would you imagine that He's talking about something that's going to take place more than two thousand years later? Or something that's going to take place in the near future, at least within the framework of one generation, which in Jewish terms measured forty years? Elsewhere in similar predictions, Jesus says, you will not go over all you will not go over all of the cities of Israel until you will see the kingdom of God coming in power. Elsewhere He says, some of you will not taste death until all of these things are fulfilled. If you look at those three texts together, as critical scholars do and as Bertrand Russell did, it says it's clear that Jesus taught and expected the consummation of His kingdom to occur within a timeframe of forty years.

Didn't happen, so here we are trying to dig up His bones and the bones of Mary Magdalene. Well, let's look at how Jesus answers their very straightforward question. Jesus, answering them, began to say, take heed that no one deceives you. So the first thing He warns them about is deception. They ask, when are these things going to take place? He said, first of all, you have to be careful because there will be attempts to deceive you about these matters.

So be careful. For many will come in My name, saying, I am He, and will deceive many. So the first sign that He gives of the fulfillment of His prophecy is the sign of false false messiahs that will come. Now again, people that are looking for a yet future fulfillment of this point to people in our day who claim to be God incarnate and false prophets that abound here and there. However, the first century was known with significant false messiahs who claimed to be the return of Jesus, and those are documented in Jewish history, particularly in the writings of Josephus. So Jesus predicted false messiahs would come, and false messiahs did come before the temple was destroyed.

Let's keep that in front of us. Second of all, when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled, for such things must happen, but the end is not yet. I see people reading the paper today, and they say every time a war breaks out in Iran or Iraq or wherever it is, they say, see, this is a sign of the time Jesus is coming right around the corner because we're hearing all about these wars and rumors of wars. But of course there are wars and rumors of wars in every generation.

Meanwhile, you're sitting there. You're one of the disciples, and they're asking Jesus, what will be the sign when these things will happen? And He said, well, be careful.

Don't be deceived. There will be rumors of wars and wars before these things take place. You're a disciple of Jesus, and you're thinking that these rumors of wars and wars are something that will be a harbinger that will come before the destruction of the temple and before the destruction of Jerusalem. So you're going to pay attention in your lifetime to wars and to rumors of wars. In A.D. 40, the mad Emperor Caligula tried to establish a statue of himself in the sacred precincts of the temple in Jerusalem, and because of that, rumors were rife that war was about to break out where the Romans were going to invade the Jews to try to stop their protests against this profound sacrilege of an emperor trying to establish his statue in the sacred place of the Jewish temple. But as it were, they were just rumors, and war did not break out until the Jewish revolt in A.D. 66, which then ended in the destruction of the temple and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. But Jesus says, you'll hear about these things.

Don't be troubled. Such things must happen, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines, and there will be troubles, and these are just the beginning of sorrows. So again, today modern prognosticators who are looking for the return of Jesus anytime in the next few weeks call attention to the serious famines that affect the world in our day, famines that have broken out in Armenia, famines that have taken such a tremendous toll in Ethiopia and other nations in Africa in our time. Yet at the same time, in between the years 41 and 54 A.D., during the reign of Claudius, who came after Caligula and before Nero, there were several serious famines that affected the Near Eastern community. Also, a tremendous earthquake hit the region of Phrygia in the year 61 A.D. and leveled the city of Pompeii in the year 63. So in that timeframe of the first generation, terrible famines, wars, rumors of wars, and earthquakes all took place in the lifetime of most of the surviving disciples and apostles.

The historian, the ancient historian Tacitus records in great detail manifold disasters that took place between Jesus' prediction of this destruction and the actual destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., which leads me to conclude that when Jesus is talking about the signs here that have to take place before the end actually occurs, those signs that are just the beginning of sorrows, I believe our Lord was calling attention to things that were going to happen in the first century, which in fact did happen in the first century. But the reason that we transfer them and transpose them to the yet unfulfilled future is because what didn't happen apparently was His return in the clouds of glory. So do you see how this kind of squeezes and puts the pressure on our temples here as we seek to understand?

Dr. R.C. Sproul, providing helpful insight into what has been a confusing passage for many. We're glad you've joined us today for Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb, and each Sunday we return to Dr. Sproul's expository sermon series, Through the Gospel of Mark. This style of preaching allows us to see the flow of the entire book, and it allows R.C.

to expand on each verse. Our resource offered today will be a great study companion for you in your own examination of Mark's gospel. When you contact us today with a donation of any amount, we will be glad to send you a digital download of Dr. Sproul's commentary on Mark.

You can go online to request it at renewingyourmind.org. And if you found this study helpful, you may want to check out a special selection of video courses offered on Ligonier Connect. That's our interactive online learning platform.

You can watch videos, review study guides, and test your knowledge with quizzes and discussion questions. Ligonier Connect is reflective of our desire to bridge the gap between Sunday school and seminary. So I hope you'll check it out.

Just go to connect.ligonier.org. Well, next Sunday, Dr. Sproul will continue preaching through Mark chapter 13. The predictions Jesus made in that passage should not cause us confusion or fear. We'll learn more about them next week here on Renewing Your Mind.