It is nearly beyond
the pale of comprehension to hear Jesus make a reference to the Temple, saying
“I tell you the truth, not one stone will be left on another. All will be
torn down” (Matthew 24:2b), and following that statement to have the disciples
make a massive and dramatic shift away from that very Temple to which Jesus has
clearly and obviously just referred, when they “come to Him privately” and say
“Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign of
your coming and of the end of the age?” (24:3b) As Matthew goes on to demonstrate, by their
question it is clear that the disciples well-understood that Jesus was speaking
about the coming desolation of the Temple in which He had acted and in and
around which the previous events of the narrative had all occurred.
Why this talk of the
coming of Jesus and of the end of the age? Well, seeing as how Jesus has
just been reported to have said, “For I tell you, you will not see Me from now
until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (23:39),
which is only to be found in Matthew’s account, the question about Jesus’
coming is reasonable. That statement, of course, followed the statement
concerning the house of Israel, that being the Temple (which was most assuredly
understood to be the house of Israel), being left desolate. The
desolation of the Temple, combined with the insistence that “not one stone will
be left on another” and “all will be torn down” would be an unimaginably
catastrophic event for a Jewish hearer of Jesus, and this point must be under
continual consideration as the words of Jesus are heard.
In addition, there is
no need to be hung up on “end of the age” language, because what inevitably
happens is the importation of non-Jewish “end of the age” thinking, because this
non-Jewish way of thinking about this concept has been long and unfortunately
associated with the end of the physical world itself. The idea of the
physical world coming to an end---the demise of the created order---is foreign
to the Jewish way of thinking, as the constant affirmation of Scripture is that
of a good creation gone wrong and the Creator God’s activity in and for the
world, through the agency of His divine image-bearers and then through the
agency of Himself as the Messiah, to set things right and restore that which
has fallen.
In that light, it
would be better to hear the words of Mark at this point (which are the basis
for Matthew’s account), in which the disciples, in reference to Jesus speaking
about the tearing down of the Temple, say “Tell us, when will these things
happen? And what will be the sign that all these things are about to take
place?” (13:4) Similarly, Luke reports the disciples asking, “Teacher,
when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that these
things are about to take place?” (21:7) Neither Mark nor Luke have the
disciples asking about Jesus’ coming, which, as was seen before in regards to
the devouring of the property of widows and the story of the widow making her
offering to the Temple (found in Mark and Luke, but not in Matthew), is an
indication of textual integrity, as they do not, as has just been said, have
Jesus talking about His coming.
So while the Jewish
conception about “the end of the age” is a legitimate point of discussion and
concern, it shall be sufficient for purposes of this study to say that it makes
no reference to a supposed end of the world, and confirm that, regardless of
the language used in Matthew, the question that is being asked by the disciples
in Matthew is identical in content and context to the question that is being
asked in Mark and Luke.
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