NOTES for Mar 13:1-13
When speaking of the imminent destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the end of time, Jesus undoubtedly has in mind not a distant future, but a near and even very near one: the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, following the anti-Roman revolt begun by the Zealots, 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 Saviour 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 cast into the earth.
These ‘pains’ clearly refer to what Jewish tradition usually calls the ‘messianic tribulations’: persecutions and upheavals that fall upon God's people just before the coming of the Messiah, signalling the imminent advent of the messianic age and the establishment of the messianic Kingdom. Evidently these are the tribulations of which Jesus speaks, for alongside famine, epidemics, earthquakes and wars comes the persecution of His disciples. All this takes place against a backdrop of numerous false messiahs springing up like mushrooms after rain, drawing the gullible after them only to abandon them to their fate.
There were indeed many such false messiahs at that time. All of them called for rebellion and war, and all such uprisings ended in punitive expeditions. Their leaders often managed to slip away, while punishment fell on those who would not or could not flee in time. Thus, according to the Saviour's words, history turns out to end with the end of the Second Temple, built long before by the repatriates who had returned to Judaea from Babylon. Everything that follows is no longer the old history running its course, but something new, unfolding according to different, new laws.