In Mark 13 one of the disciples, on seeing the temple, seems to have an excited moment and says to Jesus something like
“Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”
Jesus replies by giving a prediction of the destruction of the temple, but then seems to muddy the waters by talking about earthquakes famines, wars and other end-time “Apocalyptic” type signs. The gospel must be preached to all nations. The “abomination that causes desolation” will come ‘The sun will be darkened and the moon will no longer give its light.’ And so on. He then really makes things hard by saying:
Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.
This really makes it tough. It looks like all these things haven’t happened yet and yet all those people who were in that generation are surely dead. So, was Jesus a failed prophet? And if so what does that mean for us? Did Mark get the wrong end of the stick about what would happen when Jesus died? Is there an answer to this riddle?
I have always been quite concerned about this passage – its very exciting, but Jesus does seem to have got it wrong about what would happen after he died!
Luckily (if you believe in luck) I had the chance to research this passage and come to a fresh understanding of it that I think puts Jesus more firmly into his Jewish roots and answers the problem for us.
So what did Jesus think would happen after he died? You can read about it here!
2 Comments
Interesting but does it flow in the Holy Spirit?
Glad you found it interesting. Not sure if I know what you mean by “does it flow in the Spirit”? Maybe you could unpack it a bit?