Is Jesus Coming Back Soon? Mark 13:24-37
Mark Chapter 13, along with Matthew Chapter 24, record Christ’s teaching in what is known as the Olivet Discourse. It gets that name because Jesus was at the Mount of Olives, preparing his disciples for his impending passion, and Peter, James, John, and Andrew pose to him a question about the end of the age. The Olivet Discourse is Christ’s answer to that question, and today’s gospel lesson is the conclusion of his answer.
Our gospel lesson begins with these words: “24 “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light…” Jesus words “After that tribulation” refer to the things he has just described in the previous verses of Mark 13 – a great persecution of believers in Christ, an event which Jesus calls abomination of desolation being set up, and Jesus refers to an earlier prophecy of Daniel as the first mention of this event, and finally the astronomical events that are mentioned in today’s gospel – a darkened sun and moon, and stars falling from the heavens on to the earth.
There is a curious double-mindedness among Christians about Jesus’ teaching here. On one hand, there have always been those who have attempted to correlate what Jesus has said with the events around them. The recently popular series of books and films known as “Left Behind,” are one example of this. Back in the 70s when I was first coming to some sort of spiritual life myself, Hal Lindsay made a small cottage industry out of books which supposedly expounded the events of the day in terms of this prophecy and others found in the Book of Revelation.
This was nothing new, of course. One such prophet was an Adventist leader named William Miller whose legacy to us today includes both the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists.
Miller first predicted that Christ would return on 21st March 1842, and subsequently revised the date to April 3, 1843.
When Jesus didn’t return, you’d have thought that his movement would have died. But it didn’t. Rather it continued to grow. Miller recalculated a new date for the second soon - April 18, 1844. When Jesus did not show up on that date, there was again frustration and some followers left the Adventist ranks. So, Miller came up with a third date - 22nd October 1844. Surprisingly, this third date rallied his followers, and they began to spread the news of the new date of the second coming. Churches which rejected their message were denounced as agents of “Babylon.” and the devil.
One account notes that “Fields were left unharvested, shops were closed, people quit their jobs, paid their debts, and freely gave away their possessions with no thought of repayment.” William Miller himself began selling white “ascension robes” to the faithful, many of whom waited for the miraculous event in freshly dug graves. But as we all know, the Second Coming did not occur on 22nd October 1844.
As you go back in Church history, this kind of phenomenon is not hard to find. There was a huge rash of this kind of thing at the turn of the first millennium. And, all of these kinds of things have given a bad name to any effort to speak intelligibly about whether or not one can recognize the end of the age.
Indeed, that’s the other side of the double-mindedness about the Lord’s return to the earth. While some will make an attempt to predict when it will be, others loudly scorn that sort of effort, insisting that the failure of all previous attempts discredits the idea. And, of course, they can point to the very words of Jesus Himself in today’s gospel lesson. “32 But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
What are we to think of all this? Which of these two perspectives on the end of the age is correct? Can we know that Jesus is about to return? Or is that event hopelessly hidden from any and everyone until Jesus suddenly shows up to everyone’s surprise?
The answer, I think, is that both perspectives are correct, so long as we do not push them beyond what Jesus taught his disciples. In the space of a homily today, we cannot cover even a sketchy summary of eschatology. But, I do think we can nail down a few notions that have practical consequences for how we shall live our lives in light of the end of the age. Let’s take those few notions in turn.
First of all, those who insist that we can see the end of the age approaching are correct in principle. When Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked our Lord about how to recognize the end of the page, either told them how to recognize the end of the age or he didn’t. And, of course, the bulk of Matthew 24 and Mark 13 are devoted to Jesus’ laying out what would occur at the end of the age, including his return to the earth. If the true answer to the disciples’ question had been – you can’t know, you can’t see it coming, then we might have expected Jesus to speak that line about no one knowing – not the angels in heaven, nor the Son of God – and to have left it at that.
But, before Jesus speaks about not even himself knowing the time, he had quite a bit to say by way of prophecy or pointing to earlier prophecy as an answer to the disciples’ question. In these chapters, there are three large-scale features which I have already mentioned – a widespread and intense persecution of believers, a desecration of the Temple, and some sort of astronomical events relating to the sun, the moon, and what appears to be meteor or asteroid impacts on the earth. “ Then,” Jesus says, “they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.” I do not know how else to read these words of our Lord except that these astronomical events are the last major things to occur before the Lord returns to the earth AND that when these things in the heavens occur, his return promptly follows them.
So, yes, one can see the end of the age approaching. Jesus tells us what to look for.
But, what about those words Jesus said about himself not knowing the day or the hour? To which I would say, well, yes, what about them?
I think people make a grave mistake when they suppose that these words by Jesus mean that one cannot see the end of the age approaching. Instead, what Jesus is saying is this: you can see the end of the age approaching BUT as far as the day and the hour of Jesus return – THAT you cannot know. In fact, Jesus himself and the angels in heaven do not know, but the Father only.
These two ideas are NOT inconsistent with one another; they do not contradict one another. And, Jesus’ parable proves this.
Consider, the parable of the fig tree, he says. When its branch has already become tender, and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. You may not know the day when summer arrives. And, summer, in this context, is not the astronomical date which people have been calculating ever since they began making observations of the heavens. No, Jesus here is speaking of the virtual summer, the time when the season actually turns. And, as you and I know from this very year, the turn of the seasons this year hasn’t given two frittered figs for the dates on the calendar. We had 90+ degree temperatures in October, and yet summer is supposed to have ended on the 22nd of September. Spring officially begins on the 21st of March. But, I can recall as a boy in Amarillo Texas the year that we had 15 inches of snow on the ground in the middle of April.
So, quite apart from what the astronomers tell us, the careful observer of the plants and the weather will have a good idea of when the actual turn of the season is upon them. As Jesus said, when the branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. The point? Jesus tells us that too: 29 So you also, when you see these things happening – the things that Jesus has just explained – you know that the end of the age is near, at the doors!
And, just to make sure they do not missing his point, Jesus adds this: “30 Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.” Many who wish to make Jesus into some sort of inaccurate radical suppose that “this generation” is a reference to the people alive at the time that Jesus is speaking. That is not true, of course. He refers to those who see the signs of the end of the age. Those who see these signs – that generation – will not pass until they also see the return of Jesus from heaven. “31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.”
“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” These words are every bit as true concerning Jesus’ return from heaven as they are true of the man who looks for the coming of summer. You see the signs of the turn of the seasons, but they do not tell you the precise day and hour when the season turns. And, I think Jesus’ choice of words here are paramount – he is the one who stipulates that it is the DAY and the HOUR of his return which no one except the Father knows. On the other hand, though the precise day and hour are not knowable by anyone, the fact that this day and hour are near CAN be known, and Jesus tells us what to look for.
Many, of course, have thought that they’ve seen the signs. And, indeed, they may have seen some of them. When the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D., many Christians at the time thought that Jesus’ return was imminent. What made it seem all the more plausible was the wide-spread persecution that was beginning to break out against Christians. But, the astronomical signs Jesus spoke about did not happen. There have been periods when there were great meteor showers, and these have sparked expectation that the Lord would return soon; but, they were not accompanied by wide-spread persecution of believers, or by the desecration of a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
In our day, there is a great deal of interest in the plans of some Jews to resurrect the Jewish temple destroyed in 70 A.D. That site is currently where the Dome of the Rock, a Mosque, sits. But, the resurrection of the State of Israel back in the 40s got a lot of Christians excited that the signs of Jesus’ return were breaking out.
Is Jesus return near? Honestly, I do not know. The signs that Jesus foretold, while they might be possible to occur, they have not occurred yet. There is not Temple in Jerusalem to desecrate. And, while there is intense persecution of believers in various areas of the world – in particular, Muslim dominated areas – there is not yet a general persecution around the world against Christians. And, never since the days of Jesus’ teaching on these things has the Sun been darkened and the moon failed to give its light. A local eclipse is not going to satisfy this sign, and whatever does satisfy it will be accompanied by something which Jesus describes as the stars of heaven falling to the earth.
So, what are we to do with this passage from the gospels? Forget it? No, we should not forget it. We should do as Jesus instructed, for he tells us what we are to do with this passage of the gospels: We are to watch and pray, we are to be like the servants of that who went to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. What are we to do with this gospel passage? Jesus tells us: “35 Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning— 36 lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. 37 And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!”
This seems to be what believers have always failed at – watching, either at the time or at the place where God told them to watch. You know, of course, that the Jews all knew that Messiah was supposed to be born in Bethlehem. Why, then, in the day that Christ was born there, was Bethlehem a tiny hamlet stuck out on the outskirts of greater metropolitan Jerusalem? Why wasn’t there a perpetual committee of the nation’s leadership continually in residence in Bethlehem, observing every birth, following every male child born there. They knew – or at least they knew what the OT prophecies foretold – but they were not watching. Jesus told his disciples repeatedly that he was going to be killed in Jerusalem, and that he was going to rise from the dead on the third day. Why weren’t every one of the disciples camped outside the tomb, waiting for him to come out? They knew – or at least they knew what Jesus had told them – but they were not watching.
And, Jesus told his disciples and us, through the Bible, that he is going to return to the earth at the end of the age. He didn’t tell us WHERE (as he did in the prophecy of Christ’s birth at Bethlehem), nor did he tell us precisely when (as he told his disciples concerning his resurrection). But, he did tell his disciples and us the signs of the end of the age. And, he told us to watch and pray, to watch for the end of the age, and to pray for our perseverance through the tumult that precedes his return to the earth. And, while we watch and pray, we are his servants, who have been left in charge of his house, and who have been given our own work to do. We should be doing that work with the idea that the Lord could come and that we would rejoice in appearing.
I know an artist who developed a technique for teaching his students to paint. He would set them at easel that bore a large tablet of paper. He would give them a piece of charcoal. And, then he would flash onto the wall a picture of some simple object – it might be a vase, or a tree, or a person in some kind of pose. The student was allowed to draw only so long as the picture was projected on the wall. And that picture would appear on the wall for only two seconds. Obviously, the most that a student could do in those two seconds was to make a few rapid gestures in charcoal on the tablet.
And, so it would go, for dozens and dozens and dozens of pictures broadcast on the wall. After a hundred or so of these gesture drawings, the teacher would leave the picture on the screen for one second more. And, after another hundred pictures, he’d leave it up for yet another second. He told his students that they must draw so that they could stop at any moment and what they would have would amount to an accurate representation of their subject – within the parameters allowed to them.
I’ve always thought this was a good way to think of our service to Christ as we await his return. We have our work to do, we have something to produce. Even if we do not think the end of the age is upon us right now – and, to be honest, I do not think it is upon us at this moment – we still have the day of our death looming out there, and that date for certain we do not know. On that day, angels will come and gather each one of us, and when they arrive, I think we would all like to know that whatever our work for the Lord is, we are busy doing it when he summons us to Himself.
The Jews were not watching at the first advent. Jesus tells us how to recognize the signs of his second advent. God grant us grace to heed his words and to watch and pray, while we await the arrival our Lord from the heavens, to gather us into the company of the saints of light as Christ establishes his Kingdom upon the earth.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
