14"When you see 'the abomination that causes desolation standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 15Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. 16Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. 17How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 18Pray that this will not take place in winter, 19because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. 20If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. 21At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or, 'Look, there he is!' do not believe it. 22For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect—if that were possible. 23So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.
24"But in those days, following that distress,
" 'the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
25the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'
26"At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.
BACKGROUND READING:
Daniel 11-12
Isaiah 13:9-22
Isaiah 34:1-5
Psalm 110
Dig Deeper
How many of us have walked in on the middle of a conversation, and not really been able to understand what was being talked about? Most of us have experienced that to one degree or another. To understand conversations like that, we need to have been in at the beginning of the conversation so that we have the code, so to speak, as to what is being talked about.
This is something of the case here. Mark knows that what he is writing is going to be a bit difficult to have a proper understanding. So much so, that in verse 14 he says, let the reader understand. This tells us that without the proper understanding it will be easy to mistake the message of this passage or to not understand it at all. In order to truly understand this passage, we have to be able to grasp the scriptural allusions and echoes throughout the passage.
It is important to remember that this passage is a continuation of a question about the continued existence of the Temple. In yesterday’s portion of the reading, Jesus was warning his followers to be patient. They would see many signs that would frighten them, but these signs by themselves would not mean that the end was at hand, they were merely the beginning of the birth pains.
The mood of the instructions changes in this passage, however. When they see the abomination that causes desolation, they will know that it is time to flee without delay. This is the sign that Jerusalem is on the eve of destruction, the event that all of the other signs have been pointing to.
We can look back now and realize that this all culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD. One need only read the work of the Jewish first-century historian, Josephus, to realize the true horror of this event. The Roman army set up a siege of Jerusalem, yet the factional fighting and warring within the walls added up to more Jews being killed by fellow Jews than by Romans. Gangs of cross-dressing terrorists developed, roving through the besieged city, killing, looting, and raping. Things got even worse as many of the people turned to cannibalism to survive, including one account of a mother cooking and eating her own infant.
The wording of the abomination of desolation comes from Daniel, who wrote of a time when invading armies would overrun Jerusalem, stop the regular Temple sacrifices, and set up a desolating abomination. Jesus is not saying that this will be the same event that Daniel wrote about, which was no doubt a prophecy concerning the actions of Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century BC, he was saying that something of the sort, but even worse, would happen again. When this type of event happened, it would be the time to run, if they hadn’t already.
People in great distress are often easily fooled so Jesus warns them that during these horrible days they need to be on their guard about false Messiahs. In fact, Josephus wrote of many claiming to be the Jewish Messiahs during the war with Rome between 66-70 AD. They were trying to gather an army, claiming that they would be the one to bring rescue and victory to Israel, yet they all failed.
When reading passages like this, we must remember that in the Jewish mind set the only way to do justice to events like chaos, murder, civil war, four Roman emperors in one year (69 AD), and the Roman general Titus surrounding Jerusalem, its doom immanent, was to use the prophetic cosmic language of the type used originally in Isaiah 13:10 and 34:4 to describe the destruction of Babylon and Edom. This was not a prediction of the end of the physical universe and the end of time. If it was there would be no need for running. It was, rather, the end of the Old Covenant, the end of the Jewish way of life. They had failed to be the light of the world and would now be judged.
Jesus says that this will be the time of the Son of Man coming in clouds, language taken directly from Daniel 7. These passages are not about the return of Jesus, but about the vindication and triumph of the Messiah, and the simultaneous judgment that would befall those who had rejected him. This sums up Psalm 110 when the Messiah would make all enemies his footstool. Mark sees this event as the confirmation of all of Jesus’ work, his life, resurrection, and prophecies concerning the destruction of the Temple.
There is another thing that would happen at this time. The full establishment of the mission to reach out to the Gentile world, something that Jesus did not do. It would be time for his followers to go out to ends of the earth where the elect (a common Jewish way describing those who would come to faith in the gospel) would be waiting for the good news.
Devotional Thought
Although this passage concerned events from nearly 2,000 years ago, there are still things we can learn from it today. Just as Jesus spoke out against and judged the institutions that had failed to do his work and became dehumanizing, so we should be ready to denounce and warn people and places that have become just like that.
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