August 27, 2024: Tuesday Bible Study on the Gospel of Mark 13:1-2, 14-20
Blessings and Peace this morning for you and for all who you love. May this prayer also be ours for all of the people who are homeless, at war, and battling illness. This weekend is a national holiday. We must also give thanks to God for the gifts of work, whether retired or full or part-time, our work is a blessing from the LORD. I pray that you have been blessed with loving the work which you do. And if you struggle with it every day, begin the day by telling the LORD that you are filled with love for God, and with thanksgiving for his abundant blessings. This might just help you get through every difficult day ahead. We all need to remember that everything and each day is the LORD'S. This is the day that the LORD has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.
As you will see in a few minutes, we will begin our look of this chapter out of order. I am hopeful, as I said yesterday, that this approach will help you to connect the strands which we talked about yesterday that are in this 13th chapter of Mark.
The chapter begins with Jesus leaving the area of the Herod built Temple. He was there teaching and healing. This Temple began between 20-19 BCE. (Before the Common Era Calendar) In the time of Christ the calendar from that time forward is called the Common Era, and it certainly has to do with the life of the Savior. As Jesus leaves this Herod Built temple His disciples offer comments about the wonder and glory of its construction. It is a massive temple to the glory of Herod, and not to the Glory of God. Its massive interior dimensions are built onto the top of Mt. Moriah with no land or features of the mount being changed, instead it was built on massive pillars of stone and huge boulders to support it safely in that position. It was even connected to Herod's Castle by a bridge that was fifty feet wide which spanned the Tyropoeon Valley some 354 feet below. It is this time that Jesus offers His prophecy that this would all cease to exist, no stone left one top of any other stone. All to be thrown down! The way that anyone is able to discern what is true or false prophecy is that if the prophecy occurs then is to be known as a true prophecy. 50 years after Christ death and resurrection all of this incredible construction would be obliterated by the Roman Army chasing all the inhabitants of Jerusalem running to escape this army with the power to destroy even what appeared to be an indestructible monument. Just a note: the exterior of Herod's temple was clad with heavy plates of gold. Apparently, this gold could be seen from 50 or more miles away on a sunny morning.
Now we move on to verses 14-20. We have the general prophecy in the first two verses of chapter 13, but not in these later verses Christ describes the terror and horror of "That Day". "Flee to the mountains.” These are the prophetic words that Jews in 70 would heed as they fled Judea to Masada, where they, at their end, would be destroyed in the mountains to which they had fled. This prophecy of Christ has its origins in Daniel 9:27, 11:31, 12:11. In Daniel it is called the Abomination of Desolation. ln Daniel's time, his king set up a major temple to Zeus. In Jesus' time, it had not been very long since the temple had been adorned with the pantheon of Roman gods. These words of Christ were meant to reveal the terrible reality of what was coming because of the ways in which the Temple had been desecrated by the Romans and the Jewish king. In these verses we have not just a broad description of an end coming, but here Christ offers vivid intimate details of the horror of the people, mothers and children, old people, wealthy and poor, no one will escape! The historian Josephus tells us that in this attack from Rome, 97,000 were taken captive, and over 1,000,000 perished. No One Escaped the Roman's wrath. The stench and illness related to human bodies breaking down in death could not be escaped by anyone. For anyone left there was no help to be found. Starvation was the norm, and even cannibalism was present and happening on the part of the Jews. Christ's prophecy of this nightmare scenario came all too vividly true.
Next Monday we continue with verses 9-13 in chapter 13 of Mark.
With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim
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