NOTES for Mar 13:1-37
Today's reading is remarkable for the transition reflected in it from history to the end of time. It begins with Jesus' prophecy about the Temple, which, according to His words, awaits complete destruction (vv. 1-23). This prophecy was fulfilled in A.D. 70, when, after the anti-Roman uprising raised by the Zealots in Judea, Jerusalem was taken by the Romans by storm after a long siege, and the city, together with the Temple, was destroyed to its foundations. Only the foundation of the Temple remained, whose western retaining wall is known today as the Wailing Wall. These events were preceded by a powerful rise of the messianic movement. Shortly before the uprising began, claimants to messiahship appeared regularly in Judea, and some of them managed to organize local rebellions that were harshly suppressed by the Romans; it is evidently about such claimants that Jesus warns His disciples (vv. 5-6). The atmosphere of the era was restless and fevered. Rumors spread about an approaching war, which the Zealots said would be the final, messianic war, and every military action, even a minor one, gathered rumors around it, sometimes the most unbelievable, further intensifying this atmosphere of universal, excited expectation of the end (vv. 7-8). Jesus' warning about coming persecutions was not in vain either (vv. 9-13): persecutions of Christians really began even before the uprising of A.D. 70; and Paul's preaching had already sounded throughout the Roman Empire before the fall of Jerusalem (v. 10). When the uprising began and failed, and Jerusalem came under threat of a severe and lengthy siege, Christians, remembering the Savior's warning (vv. 14-23), left the city (the Pharisees did the same). Josephus Flavius, one of the witnesses and participants in these events, writes in detail in his book "The Jewish War" about what happened in the besieged city, about the general hatred, intolerance, and violence that reigned there.
And so, after the prophecy about events that were to happen very soon after His death and Resurrection, the Savior turns to the account of the end of time and His second coming (vv. 24-37). It would seem that these events should have followed at once, or almost at once, one after another. However, Jesus Himself says plainly that the time of His return is known only to the Father. In that case the question arises: what connection is there between the events of A.D. 70 in Jerusalem and the second coming of Christ? For believing Jews the Second Temple, built by the repatriates who returned from Babylon in the sixth century B.C., was the messianic Temple. The Messiah-Christ was to preach there, and the end of this Temple was also to become the end of earthly history and the arrival of the messianic Kingdom. And Jesus, as we can see, confirms this idea that earthly history will be completed with the defeat of the Temple, adding that it will end while the contemporaries of His earthly life are still alive (v. 30; "this generation" means "this generation"). But between the completion of earthly history and the final triumph of the Kingdom, as we can see, some time must pass, known only to the Father. And we are left to wait and keep watch (vv. 33-37): to wait for the Savior's return in the fullness of the Kingdom and to keep watch so that His return does not catch us unprepared.