restless reformer

Mark 13, treated by most folks who are not dispensationalists (which point of view I feel no need to write against), is most often understood as Jesus sort of bopping back and forth between two different subjects: the destruction of the temple, and the end of history. The problem I and many others have with this is that there’s no indication that Jesus changes subjects. You have to conclude that he was talking about the temple from verses 4-22, the end of the world suddenly in 24-28, back to the temple again in 29-31, and then back to the end of the world again in the rest of the chapter. But there’s no indication in the text itself that he does this.

My suggestion (following the preterist point of view, of which I am a “moderate,” not a “full”) is that the entire passage is about the destruction of the temple, and not at all about Jesus’ Second Coming. The biggest difficulty with this is the cosmic language of 24-28, but this is not as difficult as it seems on first glance. The reason most people say that Jesus is talking about two different things - the destruction of the temple and the end of the world - is because the language of verses 24-28 sounds like end of the world, second coming language. But it’s actually part of an entirely different tradition.

The cosmic language referring to the failing of the heavens (sun, moon, stars) is part of a longstanding tradition of apocalyptic literature that signifies divine acts of judgment. As Gentry says, it’s sort of like when we say things like, “My world is coming apart.” Back then, apocalyptic preachers would have said, “sun, moon, and stars will fail.” It’s the same thing with the “coming on the clouds.” OT judgment language speaks of God coming on the clouds in judgment (not literally appearing). So when it speaks of the Son of Man coming on the clouds, it’s a figurative way of saying “judgment is coming,” referring to the destruction of the temple.

What about the angels who gather the elect from the ends of the earth? This follows naturally from the temple destruction if we understand the symbolism of the that catastrophic event. The final destruction of the temple by God Himself as an act of judgment signifies that the place of God’s dwelling is no longer located in one place, but will be spreading out to the ends of the earth. This is exactly what Jesus meant when he said, in John 4, “The time is coming and now is that neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” will people worship, but they will worship everywhere, “in spirit and in truth.” It’s what Jesus meant when he pronounced the temple “desolate.” So the gathering of the elect from the ends of the earth refers to the gathering of all God’s people throughout the world into his church as the message of the gospel spreads throughout the world. This makes more sense than the idea of angels gathering the elect, because when Paul speaks of the second coming in 1 Corinthians 15 and in 1 Thessalonians 4, there is no mention of angels doing the gathering - rather, we are suddenly “transformed.” The “angels” in Mark 13 are the messengers of the gospel (the Greek word for “angels” is translated “messengers” several other places in Scripture). So, in other words: the reference to the gathering of the elect from the ends of the earth means this: People don’t come to God in Jerusalem anymore; instead, God is going throughout the earth to get them and gather them into his kingdom.

As Jesus said, “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” “All” really does refer to every single thing he said (rather than everything he said except verses 24-28), because even the cosmic language of verses 24-28 refers to the destruction of the temple. There doesn’t seem to me to be any indication that Jesus is changing subjects, back and forth from AD 70 to the end of the world, especially if we understand the language of verses 24-28 as figurative.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t going to be a Second Coming; it just means that Jesus wasn’t talking about it in this passage.  The preterist reading is far more simple and hardly problematic, whereas the other position has to divide the passage up in a way that the text does not warrant, simply because verses 24-28 sound so “end times.”