NOTES for Mar 13:1-13

When Jesus speaks about the imminent destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and about the end of time, He undoubtedly has in mind not a distant future but a near and even immediate one: the Temple was destroyed by the Romans after the anti-Roman uprising raised by the Zealots in A.D. 70, only a few decades after the conversation reported by the evangelist.

Jesus mentions "pains" (the corresponding Greek word literally means "birth pangs" or the pain experienced in childbirth), pointing to famine, epidemics, natural disasters, and wars as their source and root (such is the meaning of the corresponding Greek word, which literally means "beginning," "cause," "source"). The "pains" mentioned by the Savior are clearly connected with the birth of something new: in this case the Kingdom, which, as He repeatedly said, must sprout in the world like a seed thrown into the ground.

By "pains" here He clearly means what in Jewish tradition is usually called "messianic woes": persecutions and cataclysms that fall upon the people of God just before the coming of the Messiah, marking the imminent arrival of the messianic age and the establishment of the messianic Kingdom. As one can see, Jesus is speaking precisely of these woes: to famine, epidemics, earthquakes, and wars there are added here persecutions of His disciples. All that is listed takes place against the background of the appearance of many false messiahs, who spring up like mushrooms after rain, leading after themselves the gullible, whom they then abandon to their fate.

There really were many such false messiahs in those days. All of them called for uprising and war, and all such uprisings ended in punitive expeditions; moreover, the leaders often managed to slip away, while punishment fell on the heads of those who did not want to flee or did not have time to do so. Thus it turns out that history, according to the Savior's words, ends with the end of the Second Temple, built by the repatriates who had once returned to Judea from Babylon. Everything further is no longer the former history proceeding on its usual course, but something new, taking place according to different, new laws.