WE come now to the long discourse of Jesus which encompasses chapters 24 and 25. This discourse was prompted by the desire of the disciples for Jesus to admire the strength and grandeur of the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus and his disciples were just leaving the temple after the devastating judgement which Jesus had pronounced on the Pharisees in the temple. It seems that the disciples were seeking to salvage something of permanence from the decay of godliness in Israel, and they were seeing the temple as a symbol of permanence and hope in this terrible condition.

The reply Jesus gave took away from the disciples any hope. Jesus told them that this permanence was going to be totally destroyed, and for the Jews and the disciples this was a signal of the destruction of the Jewish church, and God's selection of them as his chosen people. In the gloom that this brought on the minds of the disciples, we find them in verse three taking an opportunity, later, to inquire when these things would be.

We can see their gloom, and their understanding of the prophecy of Jesus concerning the temple as being a foretelling of the end of all things, because they not only ask when the temple will be destroyed, but what will be the sign of the coming of the end of the age, or the end of the world. The disciples saw in Jesus' prophetic word concerning the temple something deeper and more embracing. They saw a prophetic word concerning the end of the world.

Jesus responds to this request for information, but not quite in the way that the disciples, perhaps, had hoped for. The disciples would have liked some concrete time, and particular events which would be easily identified in some time scale. Jesus did not give them this. Instead he talked about the end of the temple and the end of the world together in a way which the two become joined together which makes it impossible to disentangle the two event.

There is nothing strange in this in biblical terms, because much of the prophecy of the Old Testament has the same quality. Nearer and further events are spoken about in the same prophecy, so that the prophecy has more than one interpretation; one nearer and one further away in time. It is so here. In one sense the prophecy describes both events, because both events have a similar action which is foretold. This is so here. Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple, and destruction of Jerusalem. This happened in AD 70, but at the same time such destruction is a picture of events which will happen in the future at the end of the world, though it may not be a physical city which is described by the title Jerusalem. Also there are things described here which can't possibly refer to the events of AD 70.

The purpose of the answer Jesus gave to the twofold inquiry of the disciples was not so much to give them times and seasons when events would happen, but rather to reaffirm that they would happen, and what to expect when they did, and that this was to warn them, and the church down the ages, to be prepared for the events.

Just as the end of the temple was fulfilled as predicted, so will the end of the world be sure, and the second coming of Christ to judge the world. We live in an age today, and no doubt this was true of all previous ages, when the permanence of the world was taken as axiomatic. The world is seen as the one permanent thing in a changing world. The world may change but it will endure, millions of years in the future. Jesus says in this prophecy that God, the creator of the world, has set a time when he will bring the world to an end. It is true that today scientists are predicting catastrophic changes in the planet if nothing is done about it, and that these changes are destructive, but there is little, if no, suggestion that the world is coming to an end. Ordinary people believe in things like climate change and its negative effect on life, but they don't believe in the end of the world, and the end of time. Jesus predicts this in these two chapters.

The two facts which are given as certainties here is that there is an end of the world, and that Jesus Christ will return to the earth at that time, not in humility but in glory, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

In the light of this, all that Jesus is saying here in prophecy is to affirm these facts, and exhort us to be ready, and warn us of the consequences of not being ready.

Together with this is a message of comfort and encouragement for his disciples, not only the 12 sitting around him when he utters this prophecy, but all his believing disciples all through history, and in the present and those still to come. The encouragement is that all this, and the events which precede the end, are all in the purpose and omnipotent power of God, and that we should not be alarmed, but in quiet faith trust in the God of our salvation, and look forward to Christ's coming when Christ's people will enter his eternal glory for the experience of eternal bliss and joy.