NOTES for Mat 24:1-13
Jesus' words about natural disasters, epidemics, wars, and social cataclysms as labor pains in which the Kingdom is born have often been interpreted as an indication that all this will happen in the last times, becoming their characteristic feature. It is no accident that every great war or major epidemic, not to mention upheavals and revolutions, became a reason for rumors to appear in near-church circles that the last times were near.
Meanwhile, Jesus Himself says directly that the day of His return in glory and of the triumph of the Kingdom cannot be calculated, and the reason is not that this date is hidden, but that it has not yet been determined: after all, the history of the Kingdom is a divine-human process, and when it will be revealed in fullness depends not only on God but also on people. As for everything listed, Jesus calls it the "beginning" of the birth pains of the Kingdom not in the sense in which we most often understand the word "beginning" today, but in the sense of their source or primary cause.
The point here is not some special "infernal" quality of particular events, although if we speak of wars and social cataclysms, characteristic features of fallen human nature sometimes show themselves here as vividly as possible. The point is that every such event becomes for all humanity, or for some part of it, a critical situation, sometimes a liminal one, and at times simply one beyond all limits spiritually as well as socially. And such a situation can always become the last one, whether we are speaking of an individual person, a people, or all humanity as a whole.
After all, Christian history, the history of the advancing Kingdom, is on the one hand the history of Christian righteousness (or, as it is sometimes called, Christian holiness), and on the other hand the history of the ever-expanding evil in which the world lies. And every cataclysm, especially a social one, is a spiritual crisis connected with this confrontation. And it will hardly be surprising if one of them turns out to be the last. But expecting each crisis to be the last is also not worth doing.