NOTES for Mat 24:1-31
Commentators sometimes call today’s passage the “little Apocalypse.” This name is evidently connected with the fact that Jesus’ account of the end times given here resembles some descriptions in the “great Apocalypse,” the Book of Revelation of John. Yet the differences between them are no fewer than the similarities.
The principal difference is that Jesus tells His disciples about events that would occur during the lifetime of the first generation of Christians. The only exception is the conclusion of the account, which describes Christ’s return in glory (vv. 29–31). Jesus apparently connects it with the events of AD 70, when Jerusalem, after a long siege, was destroyed by the Romans as a result of the anti-Roman uprising raised by the Zealots, and the Jews were forbidden to settle in Judea (v. 15; by the “abomination of desolation” mentioned in the Book of Daniel, Jesus evidently means the desecration and destruction of the Temple by Roman soldiers when they took Jerusalem).
Christians and Pharisees, however, as the historian Josephus, an eyewitness to these events, recounts, left the city before the siege began; the Christians, it seems, were following their Teacher’s direct instruction in this case (vv. 16–20). Judging by the testimony of Josephus himself, those who remained in the city truly suffered the grave calamities of which Jesus had spoken to His disciples (v. 21). The uprising was preceded by a period of feverishly intense messianic expectations, when claimants to messiahship appeared literally every day. It is no accident that Jesus considered it necessary to warn His disciples against being carried away by such false messiahs (vv. 23–25). Yet the good news of the true Messiah had been proclaimed throughout the Roman Empire even before AD 70 (v. 14).
A natural question then arises: if Jesus’ account concerns events that took place in the first decades of Christian history, how are we to understand His words about the end of history that was to follow them? Jesus’ account was so well known to the first generation of Christians that those among them who survived the catastrophe of AD 70 were utterly perplexed: everything the Teacher had foretold had happened, yet He still did not return. Jesus Himself, however, said nothing about dates; He merely pointed to the events of AD 70 as the end of earthly history. Everything that follows evidently takes place as part of some other process not determined by this history. Another history begins: the history of the Kingdom entering the world. It is a history in which each of us will have to take part in one way or another. What that participation will be depends on us alone.