Author: Dave

I'm a Christian who has been saved and is being transformed by Jesus Christ and his gospel. Elder and Associate Pastor at Squamish Baptist Church in Squamish, BC, Canada.

Jesus has come to announce his reign, so don’t trust in human institutions (Mark 13:24–31)

Deluded evangelist Harold Camping has predicted that the end of the world will begin on May 21, 2011, which is two days away from the time I’m writing this. If you’ve been reading the last few installments of Four Minutes in Mark, you’re correct in guessing that I’m not too worried about “prophecies” like this.

Besides, just as Jesus predicted, the end of the world came in 70 A.D. Sort of.

Jesus has announced that the Jerusalem temple is going to be destroyed. His disciples are shocked that such an impressive monument and the religious institutions it shelters could be swept away. So they ask him, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?”

Now, we’ve seen that Jesus does answer their questions, but his answers are deeper than they anticipated. What his disciples don’t realize is that Jesus’ kingdom won’t fully arrive when the temple is destroyed. Rather, the destruction of the temple is a signal indicating the end of the Jewish priestly system; it indicates that Jesus’ reign has been inaugurated, that as the Messiah he has fulfilled the Old Testament “types”—the historical people, regulations, and events which pointed toward his coming. But his kingdom won’t fully arrive yet—and it still hasn’t to this day.

After a period of intense suffering during which the destruction of Jerusalem is imminent, Jesus tells his disciples, “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.” If this sounds like the end of the world, it’s supposed to! In fact, these powerful words would have been familiar to the disciples. Many of the Old Testament prophets used similar images to prophesy God’s judgment of Babylon, Egypt, Israel, or the world as a whole (see, for example, Isaiah 13:10; 24:21–23; Ezekiel 32:7–8; Joel 2:10; 3:15). Why? Because they wanted their audience to visualize the “de-creation” of the created order. God had appointed the sun, moon, and stars “to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:18). No matter how bad your life gets, you can always count on the sun rising tomorrow morning. But if you can’t trust the sun, moon, and stars, what can you trust? The prophets wanted to depict a time of chaos and destruction, a terrible judgment in which even the most reliable institutions around them would collapse. Each of these judgments was “the end of the world” on a smaller scale, a “Day of the Lord” event, and each pointed toward a final “Day of the Lord” in which heaven and earth itself would be dissolved.

So the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. is yet another Day of the Lord. It is the end of an age. The temple institution which is the foundation for Jewish politics, commerce, and religion is about to be destroyed. Their world will come to an end.

Why will this take place? To establish the kingdom of Jesus, the Son of Man. Using imagery from Daniel 7:13–14, Jesus paints the picture of his reign being established by God as he comes “in clouds with great power and glory.” And then his kingdom grows and spreads, as his chosen people from all nations are gathered in, repenting and believing, extending his reign “from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”

As wild as this promise may sound to his disciples, Jesus promises that “it is near, at the very gates.” Just like the budding of the fig tree indicates that summer is almost here, so the signs of Jerusalem’s destruction indicate that his kingdom is being established. In fact, Jesus tells his disciples, “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” Some of them will see it with their own eyes!

Then, Jesus tells them, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” There will come a final Day of the Lord in which “the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn.” They must be replaced by “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:12–13).

Don’t trust in your job security. Don’t trust in your bank account. Don’t trust in your retirement savings. Don’t trust in the stock market. Don’t trust in the government. Don’t trust in the American military. Don’t even trust in the sun, moon, and stars. They will all fail someday, without exception. Ground your faith in the promise of the Son of Man, that he is setting up “an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away” (Daniel 7:14).

And while we’re on the subject, definitely don’t trust in Harold Camping.

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Junk food entertainment

I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth.

My Entertainment Center
Image via Wikipedia

When I say that, I don’t mean it literally—though I do prefer sweet food to salty. My sweet tooth is for a different sort of food. It’s for the food of entertainment. It usually takes the form of TV or movies or music or video games or YouTube videos or even many kinds of novels and blogs and Wikipedia articles—anything that gives me a quick fix for boredom with practically no effort required on my part. Now, in my case, I’m usually a sucker for Internet entertainment, though I do dabble in movies. (My interest in video games had ended by the time I finished my sophomore year of college.)

Entertainment is quick, easy, and addictive.

Solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
—Hebrews 5:14

Have you ever gone for an entire day eating nothing but junk food or fast food? I avoid these kinds of food a lot more now than I did a few years back. For one thing, I’m more health conscious. I know that if I want to remain fit and healthy, I need to maintain a balanced diet. For another thing, I also know what it feels like to eat a lot of bad food. I wake up the next day feeling like crap. It’s not so much a feeling of nausea as a general feeling of being unwell; my body knows that something isn’t right, that I’ve been substituting good healthy meals with food that is quick, cheap, tasty, and terrible for me.

Junk food (and fast food) is like food entertainment. It takes no effort to prepare, is easy to eat, and satisfies your hunger cravings. And truth be told, there’s nothing wrong with it per se. It’s not a sin to eat a Twinkie. But if your every meal consists of a box of Twinkies, we’ve got a problem.

The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
—John 6:33

You can spend hours of your free time on entertainment—TV or the Internet or video games or whatever. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things per se, depending on the content. The problem comes when you take in too much of them.

You consume information a lot like you consume food, though in this case it’s your mind doing the consuming, not your body. So naturally, the quality of “food” your mind consumes will determine its health. I find that if I spend hours entertaining myself, I begin to feel unwell. It’s almost exactly the same feeling that I get when I substitute junk food for healthy food. And it’s a feeling that doesn’t go away easily. Even if I spend the rest of the day doing productive things or studying my Bible, I still feel crappy until I wake up the next morning.

Here’s where the law fails us as Christians: there’s no good way to say that spending X hours on entertainment is wrong while spending Y hours is okay. You can’t just invent new laws out of thin air declaring TV watching to be immoral while saying that YouTube is okay. That’s called legalism, and it’s an attempt to usurp God’s place as the one who determines what’s good and bad for us.

Cadbury eggs, a common Easter candy. One is br...
Image via Wikipedia

Maybe a more helpful way of looking at the issue of entertainment is to think about it the way we think about our diet. It’s not wrong to eat a Cadbury Creme Egg. But if Cadbury Creme Eggs are the bulk of your diet, don’t be surprised if you feel crappy all the time. Don’t be surprised if you feel depressed and lethargic and unable to focus. Don’t be surprised if your body begins to fall apart. Don’t be surprised if you begin to crave food that’s bad for you and lose your ability to enjoy food that’s good for you.

If you indulge in entertainment for hours every day, don’t be surprised if you feel crappy all the time. Don’t be surprised if you feel depressed and lethargic and unable to focus. Don’t be surprised if your spiritual life—your relationship with God—begins to fall apart. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself craving more and more entertainment while the Bible seems dull and boring.

My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.
—John 6:55–57

You need healthy food. If you’re going to watch movies, you need to watch ones that challenge your mind. You need to read good books, classics that have stood the test of time. And above all, you need the true food that comes down from heaven. You need Jesus Christ. And if you want him, you can find him in the Word of God, the Bible. You can abide in him by preoccupying yourself with the Bible, with prayer, with time spent helping and encouraging and learning from other disciples of Jesus Christ.

Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
—1 Peter 2:2–3

When you do these things, you’ll find your energy returning. You’ll find a closer relationship with God. You’ll find yourself developing a taste for what’s good.

Feed your body well, but don’t neglect to feed your soul. You need to keep a close watch on your spiritual diet.

After all, you are what you eat.

How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.
—Psalm 119:103–104

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Jesus has come to protect his disciples, so have confidence in him alone (Mark 13:14–23)

Last week, we read that Jesus doesn’t want us to be Chicken Littles who panic whenever some cataclysm happens, convinced that the world is coming to an end—that “the sky is falling!”

But what if the sky actually is falling?

After Jesus announces that the Jewish temple will be destroyed (13:1–2), his disciples have asked him, “When will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?” (13:4). In addition the destruction of the temple, they seem to want to know when he will set up his kingdom on earth. Because these two events are interrelated but separated in time, Jesus’ answer will include elements from both. But first of all, he warns them not to be easily alarmed by cataclysms or by false announcements of his coming; in fact, they should expect persecution since his coming will be delayed (13:5–13).

However, the time will come when the temple will be destroyed, and it won’t be pleasant. We know from history that in 37 years, a Roman army will overrun Judea in response to a rebellion. Jerusalem will be destroyed, and the temple will be razed to the ground, just as Jesus is prophesying. The Jews will be massacred. Jesus wants to protect his vulnerable disciples from this act of judgment, so he tells them to watch for “the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not to be.” When they see this, they are to drop everything and run! The suffering will be so terrible that “if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved.” Everyone in Judea would be killed.

We know that the Christians in Jerusalem obeyed Jesus’ warning and evacuated to the town of Pella to the north and across the Jordan River. By following Jesus’ warning, they escaped with their lives.

“But wait!” you ask. “What is this ‘abomination of desolation’ that they were supposed to look out for?” Well, we know that Jesus was quoting from the book of Daniel, in which it was prophesied that a vicious tyrant would desecrate the temple with some sort of “abomination” (Daniel 8:9–14; 9:26–27; 11:31; 12:11). This prophecy was initially fulfilled when Antiochus IV Epiphanes outlawed the worship of the Lord and set up swine sacrifices in the temple about 200 years before Jesus’ words. Apparently history is about to repeat itself, and another “abomination of desolation” is yet to come before the temple is destroyed.

And if you’re wondering whether I know what this “abomination” turned out to be, the answer is no. There are plenty of theories out there, but no one knows for sure. Ultimately, it’s not terribly important what it was exactly. What’s important is that Jesus is warning his disciples to protect them from death.

Not only is he protecting them from death with these warnings, but he’s also protecting them from deception. He tells them, “If anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. False christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect.” In times of great suffering, people will latch on to any charismatic figure who offers them hope, especially one who can (supposedly?) perform miracles. “Be on guard,” Jesus says. “I have told you all things beforehand.” This prophecy is meant to protect his disciples so that they can survive the dangerous times that are coming.

Here’s what this passage tells us about Jesus: he wants to protect those who are his own. Twice he calls them the elect—people who have been chosen by God. He won’t abandon the people whom God has chosen to be called by his name. He will preserve them even when the world around them comes apart at the seams. They can say with confidence, “The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress!” (Psalm 46:11).

So how should this affect our thinking and our behavior? First, we must be confident no matter how severe the danger surrounding us. Our confidence does not come because we have enough influence or financial security or government protection to avoid suffering. As though these things will protect us when “the earth gives way…the nations rage, the kingdoms totter” (Psalm 46:2, 6)! Neither can we be confident in our own intelligence, thinking that false teaching won’t deceive us. No, it is God who is “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear” (Psalm 46:1–2).

Second, watch out! It’s dangerous to have too much confidence in the institutions of man, whether it’s the Jerusalem temple or the national government or the stability of your employer. And as we just observed, it’s dangerous to have confidence in your own ability to discern false teaching. So watch carefully to make sure that you trust only in your Lord, Jesus Christ, to save you when the world falls apart around you.

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Augustine, Confessions VI.11.20

From day to day I postponed life in You, but I did not postpone the death that daily I was dying in myself. I was in love with the idea of happiness, yet I feared it where it was, and fled away from it in my search for it.

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Jesus has come to announce judgment, but it won’t come right away (Mark 13:3–13)

It’s Chicken Little vs. Jesus in this next compelling installment of Mark’s gospel!

In the first two verses of this chapter, Jesus has announced that the Jewish temple will be destroyed because its leadership has rejected him as the Messiah that God has sent to lead his people. Naturally, his disciples now want to know all about this impending judgment. So his inner circle of Peter, James, and John (plus Peter’s kid brother Andrew) come up to him and ask him, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?”

The rest of chapter 13 is Jesus’ response to these two questions. It’s a very difficult chapter to interpret. Much of what Jesus says seems to apply to the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., a mere 37 years later. Following a Jewish revolt, the Roman government sent an army to crush the rebellion and return Palestine to its status as a province of Rome. The army laid siege to Jerusalem, slaughtered the people, and flattened the temple. By the time that the Romans were finished, the Jewish nation had been crushed.

However, as we work through this chapter, we will see some statements Jesus makes that don’t quite fit the historical events that took place. They seem to describe judgment on a grander scale. This might surprise you or cause you to question whether Jesus prophesied accurately. However, this is part of a pattern in the Bible which you see in Old Testament prophecies. The prophets would announce that God was about to judge the nations threatening his people (or sometimes his people themselves!) while promising salvation for the remnant of his people who remained faithful to him. This divinely appointed judgment was often referred to as the Day of the Lord. And sometimes, the prophet would see beyond this immediate judgment to the ultimate Day of the Lord that will come on all the earth. God works in patterns in human history, and the Day of the Lord is one of those patterns. This is why the prophet Joel, for example, could warn about an impending plague of locusts and call it “the Day of the LORD” (2:1), yet use language that is picked up by Jesus to describe the coming judgment of God (Joel 2:10–11 and 2:30–31; compare Mark 13:24–25). The locust plague was one of many sneak previews of a future judgment coming on all the earth.

Now, when the disciples ask Jesus about the coming judgment on the temple, they probably think that this will mark the final judgment of the whole world. They think that at this point Jesus will set up his kingdom on earth (Mark 10:36; Acts 1:6). That’s probably what they mean when they ask about “these things.” They’re asking, “When will the temple be destroyed and your kingdom set up in its place?” Because the establishment of Christ’s kingdom is a far more complicated process than they think, what they’ve asked is a far more complicated question than they think. And thus Jesus’ answer is complicated as well. The destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. becomes a preview of the great worldwide judgment when the kingdom arrives “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

Now, if it were me in Jesus’ place, I might respond by laying out a nice neat timeline of “last days” events. Maybe I’d draw a chart in the dirt for them. But that’s not what Jesus does, because Jesus knows we don’t really need an end-time chart. What his disciples need is to live faithfully in this present age while they wait for God’s judgment to arrive and bring justice on the earth.

So the first thing that Jesus tells his disciples is, “See to it that no one leads you astray.” He’s concerned that the questions the disciples are asking might turn into obsessions. They might be deceived by people claiming to be the returning Christ. They might interpret wars and disasters to be signs of the end. If you’ve ever tuned into religious broadcasting or read any bestselling “end times” novels, then you probably know that Jesus’ fears are justified. There is an unhealthy obsession with plotting out end-time charts and trying to force current events to fit into biblical prophecies. Jesus says not to be alarmed when you hear Chicken Littles shout, “The sky is falling!” He says, “These are but the beginning of the birth pains.” The baby isn’t here just because the water broke, as many a mother can tell you. There’s a lot more to come before the end, and it won’t be pretty.

And just like a mother whose labor has become, Jesus’ disciples can’t expect to get away without suffering. Some end-time teachers emphasize that God’s people shouldn’t have to suffer—they will be “raptured” away from the earth before God’s judgment begins and so will escape “tribulation.” In contrast, Jesus warns us not to relax in our easy chairs. “Be on your guard,” he warns. In every age, Christians will be persecuted by everyone from hostile governments to close family members. “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake,” Jesus says. Then he promises, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” The mark of a genuine Christian is endurance. When your faith is challenged, it becomes obvious what you really believe.

You and I want Jesus to give a timeline of the end. But Jesus is much more concerned at how his disciples live in the present, before God’s judgment arrives. The end won’t come right away, so the question is whether we will remain faithful to him in the world as it now exists. Will you get carried away by apocalyptic fantasies? Will you buckle under hostility from family or authority figures? Or will you remain sober-minded and faithful to the end?

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