On the Mount of Olives, Jesus warned His disciples about coming days of tribulation. In this sermon, R.C. Sproul continues his series in the book of Mark to discuss the difficult times that Christ described.

This morning, we will continue our study of the gospel according to Mark. We are still in chapter 13. We are looking at the Olivet Discourse, and I will begin reading at Mark 13:9–20. I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

“But watch out for yourselves, for they will deliver you up to councils, and you will be beaten in the synagogues. You will be brought before rulers and kings for My sake, for a testimony to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand, or premeditate what you will speak. But whatever is given you in that hour, speak that; for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Now brother will betray brother to death, and a 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 shall be saved.

“So when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not” (let the reader understand), “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down into the house, nor enter to take anything out of his house. And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! And pray that your flight may not be in winter. For in those days there will be tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the creation which God created until this time, nor ever shall be. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake, whom He chose, He shortened the days.

This is the Word of God. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Father, as we continue to look at this mysterious prophecy uttered by Your Son, we pray that the Spirit of truth will assist us as we seek to understand it. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This Generation

The subheadings on the page of my Bible from this portion of chapter 13 include “The Signs of the Times and the End of the Age” and “The Great Tribulation.” Last Sunday, when I began this study of the Olivet Discourse, I mentioned there is no passage in the New Testament that gives more compelling evidence of the supernatural character of the Bible and the person of Jesus in terms of His detailed future predictions of the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, which came to pass within one generation. At the same time, there is no portion of Scripture that has been more subject to criticism from skeptics than the Olivet Discourse because within it, Jesus speaks of His coming at the end of the age on clouds of glory. The three things He announces—the destruction of the temple, the destruction of Jerusalem, and His coming at the end of the age—are all within the framework of what Mark calls “all these things.”

When the disciples asked Jesus point-blank, “When will these things take place, and what will be the sign of the coming of all these things,” Jesus mentioned a timeframe of one generation, saying, “This generation shall not pass away until all these things are fulfilled.” Because of that prediction, people like Bertrand Russell and critical biblical scholars in our day have said, “See, the Bible can’t be trusted, and neither can Jesus, because He predicted ‘all these things’ within the framework of that generation.”

There have been many attempts to deal with that difficulty, some by redefining the meaning of the word “generation” in frankly torturous ways that I do not think stand up. Others suggest that what we have here is similar to what we see in the Old Testament where a prophecy has a short-term application and then a fuller application later in history, and so perhaps this is what is in view. Still another attempt to interpret the Olivet Discourse is to say that Jesus was not talking about His final coming at the end of time but His judgment coming at the end of the Jewish age, which would have been fulfilled in AD 70. That view has become more and more popular as criticism has intensified in our day.

This morning, I want to show you ways this text may be understood in terms of its first-century application. I did that briefly last week with respect to the wars and rumors of wars, the earthquakes and famines, and the beginning of sorrows.

The Persecution of the Apostles

At verse 9 we read: “But watch out for yourselves, for they will deliver you up to councils, and you will be beaten in the synagogues. You will be brought before rulers and kings for My sake, for a testimony to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand, or premeditate what you will speak. But whatever is given you in that hour, speak that; for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.”

This portion of the prophecy sounds like an outline for the book of Acts, does it not? In the book of Acts, as we watch the Apostolic spread of the gospel in the first century, we see the repeated experiences of the Apostles being persecuted. First, the Jewish community inflicted serious persecutions upon the Apostles, then later, the power of Rome inflicted persecutions.

We see Paul, for example, going into the synagogues in all the major cities of Asia Minor and throughout that area during his missionary journeys. At times he was thrown out bodily, sometimes beaten with rods, and sometimes stoned and left for dead. We see Paul’s standing before Agrippa in chains, giving his testimony to the king, and Agrippa saying, “Paul, almost thou persuadeth me to be a Christian.” Paul said, “I would that you were, not only almost but altogether such as I am, except for these chains” (Acts 26:28–29).

There is a sense in the book of Acts of the early church’s awareness of the presence and power of God the Holy Spirit, who would deliver them out of the hands of kings, rulers, and councils, giving them words to speak on the appropriate occasions. Remember that these words of warning were not given to us originally, but to the leaders of the first church. Of the twelve Apostles—apart from Judas, of course, who hung himself—the only one who was not martyred in the first century was John. All the rest were put to death for the testimony of their faith.

All the Nations

You might balk at verse 10, “The gospel must first be preached to all the nations.” Remember, Jesus was answering the question, “When will these things take place,” specifically regarding the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem. Then He said that the gospel must be preached to all the nations, all the ethnoi, all the gentiles, and of course the gospel was preached to the ethnoi in the first century. The Apostle Paul, when he wrote to the Romans, rejoiced that the gospel had already spread abroad through the whole world.

We might think: “Wait a minute. The gospel didn’t go to Argentina. The gospel didn’t go to China. The gospel didn’t go to Australia. The gospel didn’t go to the American Indians or the Eskimos by this time, so how could Paul write that the gospel had gone to the whole world?”

Paul was speaking about the Mediterranean world, the known world of that time, where the gospel had been preached in the first century. Remember, Jesus earlier had said, “You will not go through all of the cities of Israel till you will see the kingdom of God coming in power.” So, even that text in a degree was fulfilled before AD 70.

Betrayers of the Faith

Jesus went on to say: “Now brother will betray brother to death, and a 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 shall be saved.”

One of the most difficult problems the early church had to deal with was referred to as the lapsi problem. Many Christians today are not even aware that there was a lapsi problem. Some interpreters of the book of Hebrews believe that one of the main reasons the book was written was to address the lapsi matter, which began in the first century.

What we hear from that era regarding the Jewish and Roman persecution is the heroic stand the martyrs made under severe persecution. They were made into human torches to illumine the gardens of Nero, fed to the lions, slaughtered by gladiators in the arena, the Circus Maximus, the Coliseum, and other places where Christians in their death throes were made sport for the Roman spectators.

We say that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, but dear friends, it is a fact of history that not all professing Christians went to their deaths singing hymns. There were those who caved in. There were those who lapsed. There were those who betrayed their profession of faith. There were those who betrayed their friends, parents, brothers, and sisters to save their own lives. In a word, there were traitors to the faith in the first century, just as Jesus warned.

I will never forget living in Holland in 1965. I had gone to the market, and I was coming back carrying a bag of groceries. As I approached the home where we were staying in the little village, I saw a woman approaching me on the sidewalk. As a matter of common courtesy, I greeted her, saying something like, “Good afternoon.” Her face lit up like a light bulb, and she stopped in her tracks. It was not enough for her to say, “Good afternoon.” She began to ask me questions and engage me in conversation.

Even though I did not know her, I stood there on the sidewalk right in front of the place where we were staying and talked to her for ten or fifteen minutes. Finally, the conversation ended, and I took my groceries and went into the house where we had rented a room. Our landlady greeted me at the door, and she was livid. She was beside herself in fury and rage, and she began to berate me because I was talking to the lady out in the street. I asked: “What’s the matter? What did I do wrong?”

The landlady revealed that the woman had been a collaborator during World War II. The war had been over for twenty years, but nobody in that village would talk to her even now because of her treason. Because of her, some of the young men in the village had been carried away to prison camps in Germany. I discovered firsthand the pain people experienced and the reluctance they had to forgive those who had betrayed them. Jesus predicted this would happen before the fulfillment of the prophecy.

In the middle of the 1950s, when the Russians occupied Poland, Christianity was outlawed. Not only were children not allowed to pray in schools, but they were not permitted to pray at home, and the rules were that if parents read the Bible or prayed with their children, it was the children’s obligation to report them to the authorities when they came to school. That happened during many of our lifetimes, where children betrayed their parents, and the parents were persecuted.

The Abomination of Desolation

Jesus went on, “‘So when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not’ (let the reader understand), ‘then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.’” There are all kinds of differences of scholarly opinion as to what is referred to in this text as the abomination of desolation.

Many scholars see the prophecy of Daniel fulfilled in the second century BC with the sacrilege committed by Antiochus Epiphanes, and others see it in the beginning of the first century during the reign of Caligula when, as I mentioned last week, he ordered statues of himself erected in the temple in Jerusalem. But the Jews protested so strongly and vehemently that the project was abandoned.

According to Josephus, the Jewish historian, the greatest desecration of God’s temple took place under the direction of the Roman general who later became Emperor Titus at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. Many of you have fully read the Gospels and the New Testament. You would do well to read Josephus’ accounts of the Jewish wars because we have a firsthand report of what happened in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70.

That destruction was a watershed moment for all redemptive history. Josephus himself barely lived to see that. He lived in a different village, and he was a warrior, a general, and all his troops and all the villagers were killed except Josephus, who was captured by the Romans.

Because of his great valor and knowledge, Josephus became a friend of Titus, who took over the leadership of the invasion of Palestine when his father was recalled to Rome to become emperor. But in any case, while he was imprisoned by the Romans, Josephus pleaded with Titus to save Jerusalem. In fact, Titus used him as the mediator to negotiate a truce between the Romans and the Jews, asking the Jews to surrender.

When the Romans came and destroyed Jerusalem, they did not just march into Jerusalem and destroy the city. Jerusalem was a walled city and seemed to be an impregnable fortress, so the Romans first set siege to Jerusalem for many months. During that siege, Josephus came forth under a white flag and spoke to those inside the walled city, begging them to surrender, not because he was trying to be a traitor but because he knew that they would all be killed if they did not.

Even more important to Josephus was that he did not want to see the holy temple destroyed. His descriptions of those events are of great importance. He considered the fulfillment of Daniel to be Titus’ entrance into the holy place and his destroying it in AD 70.

Flee to the Mountains

Jesus said, “Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.” Jesus was telling the people to flee. Elsewhere He said, “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, flee to the mountains” (Luke 21:20–21). I mentioned last week that the first great holocaust of the Jewish people took place in the destruction of Jerusalem, when 1.1 million Jews were slaughtered. But strangely, the Christians were not among them. Why? Because Jesus had warned about this tribulation that was to come, and He told His people to flee to the mountains.

Jesus’ advice to flee to the mountains at the time of an invading army was completely against all common strategy in the ancient world. At the first sight of an invading army, people would flee from their villages. But where did they go? They did not run for the hills. They did not go into the mountains. They made haste into the walled cities, which they believed was the safest place to be.

There were not normally 1.1 million inhabitants of Jerusalem at that time. The reason so many Jews were killed in the destruction of Jerusalem was because when the Roman invasion of Israel started, people from all the villages, as soon as they got word, made a beeline to Jerusalem because they thought they would be safe. But the Christians did not do that, because Jesus told them not to.

The Fulfillment of Prophecy

What else did Jesus say?

Let him who is on the housetop not go down into the house, nor enter to take anything out of his house. And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! And pray that your flight may not be in winter. For in those days there will be tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the creation which God created until this time, nor ever shall be. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake, whom He chose, He shortened the days.

Dear friends, you know as well as I do that when Jesus spoke about the great tribulation, the standard view of this text in our culture and in the church today is that He was speaking simply and only of a tribulation at the very end of time, prior to His return in glory. You can barely watch Christian television or listen to Christian radio without hearing somebody talk about the approaching great tribulation and how Christ will come before the tribulation. But I cannot find a single verse anywhere in Scripture teaching that.

In any case, it may be that Jesus was predicting something with a short-term fulfillment and a long-term fulfillment, and I do not know. But we do not have to look beyond AD 70 to find a perfect fulfillment of what He was talking about in this text, because this was the greatest catastrophe in the history of the Jews, involving the destruction of more than one million of their people, their sacred city, and their holy temple.

But what about the rest of the prophecy when Jesus talked about coming on the clouds of glory? How are we going to fit that into the forty-year framework of expectancy He gave to His disciples? That is a very important question, and that is what we will deal with the next time.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.