False Prophets, Wars, and Persecution in the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24:1–28)

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of New Testament studies from Matthew 24-25.

“Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. ‘Do you see all these things?’ he asked. ‘I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.’ As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. ‘Tell us,’ they said, ‘when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’

Jesus answered: ‘Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, “I am the Christ,” and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. So when you see standing in the Holy Place “the abomination that causes desolation,” spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak.

How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.

At that time if anyone says to you, “Look, here is the Christ!” or, “There he is!” do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect, if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. So if anyone tells you, “There he is, out in the desert,” do not go out; or, “Here he is, in the inner rooms,” do not believe it. For as lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.’ ”

Let us bow in prayer.

In this most disputed of passages, Lord God, we earnestly beseech you that the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts will be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Anyone who engages for very long in serious study of the Scripture soon becomes convinced that the structure of a passage is one of the keys to its interpretation. It is certainly not the only one, but it is an extremely important feature. Thus, for example, when you turn to the Sermon on the Mount, you notice right away that the first beatitude promises as the blessing, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” You note that all of the blessings until the last one are something else, and the last one again is “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

You immediately cock an eye and you say, “Aha! Inclusio.” You have a literary inclusion here in which the first one and the last one work together to say that basically these beatitudes are presenting to you the norms of the kingdom. This is what it is like to operate under the kingdom of heaven.

Or when you turn to the book of Revelation and you study chapters 4 and 5 and discover there the panoramic setting which introduces the breaking of the seals, the seals in turn giving over to the trumpets and the trumpets to the bowls and so forth. You understand that whatever the interpretation, you’ve got to make due with that structure. The structure is established in the text.

Again, we are familiar with many passages in which there are chiasms or in which there are parallelisms and so forth. These structures are part of the text and we go astray if we ignore them. Nowhere is the question of structure in biblical interpretation more important than in the interpretation of Matthew 24 and 25.

By this I mean that the way we relate the parts of the chapter to each other will, to a large part, reflect how we understand not only this discourse but also how we understand a great deal of Christian eschatology. Let me outline for you, first of all, some of the classic approaches to the interpretation of these two chapters, what their turning points are, and how they relate to some of those structures.

1. Classic dispensationalism, embracing both premillenialism and pretribulationism.

There are various forms of the theory. The most common runs something like this. Chapter 24, verses 4–28 (or possibly verses 15–28) is a description of the seven-year great tribulation before which Jesus comes in secret rapture, and after which Jesus comes in the second advent.

In other words, it is argued that everything that Jesus describes from verse 4 on (or at least from verse 15 on) … the description of wars, rumors of wars, the description of persecution, of false christs, then the description of abomination of desolation and so forth, all the way through to more warnings about false christs … has to do with the seven-year tribulation period.

This means that the description that seems to have to do with Jerusalem in verses 15–28 really must have to do with the Jerusalem with a new temple in it, especially when you tie this passage also to Luke 21, where the reference to the city and to the temple becomes quite explicit.

Then, verses 36–40 describe the pretribulation secret rapture. It is argued that the word that in verse 36 refers to something other, something else, something foreign. “No one knows about that day.” Not the day we have been talking about, but that day, some other day. So the pretribulation secret rapture is secret, it is argued. No one knows about that day.

On the other hand, verses 29–35 deal with the posttribulation second advent. Because there we read (verse 29): “Immediately after the distress of those days …” The tribulation, the pieces of those days. That is, immediately after the tribulation, then you have the second advent with the Messiah coming on the clouds of heaven and so forth.

Wohlberg himself adds various refinements. For instance, in chapter 24, verse 2, he sees the chapter’s sole allusion to the fall of the temple in AD 70. “Do you see all these things?” he says, pointing to the temple, and so forth. “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another. Every one will be thrown down.” That is the allusion to the destruction of the temple in AD 70, according to Wohlberg.

The questions that the disciples ask in verse 3 must be analyzed as three. First, “When will this happen?” That is, this destruction of the city, the first question. Second, “What will be the sign of your coming?” Third, “What will be the sign of the end of the age?” In this theory, the first question is now not answered by Jesus because he’s already answered it in verse 2. The disciples were just smart enough to catch it. Then the other two questions, it is argued, are answered by the outline I have just given you.

The one awkward point, it is argued in this interpretation, is “this generation” in verse 34. “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all of these things have happened.” But here, it is argued, “this generation” either means “this race” (that is, this Jewish race will not pass away until all of these things take place) or the generation alive at the beginning of the tribulation will not pass away. This generation, characterized by these things, will not pass away until the Lord himself returns.

Now before we dismiss this view too promptly, we need to recognize that it has one great strength, a considerable strength. It deals with the time indicators in the chapter very neatly. You have this apparent description of tribulation all the way down to verse 28 and then, “Immediately after the distress of those days, ‘the sun will be darkened …’ ” and so forth. It deals with these time parameters nicely. It’s tight.

Nevertheless, there are some immense weaknesses with the approach. This is a most unlikely rendering of “this generation.” The natural reading of “this generation” is “this generation alive when Jesus is still speaking.” We will see the reasons for this tomorrow night, God willing.

A) This interpretation depends very strongly on Matthew’s account of the Olivet Discourse at the expense of Mark 13 and Luke 21.

It is almost impossible to do a harmonization of the three chapters. That fact alone, it seems to me, makes this approach highly suspect. I don’t have time to demonstrate that. Take my word for it. It is true.

It is nowhere more true than in the initial question that is asked. The initial question takes very different forms in the three gospels. What we ultimately need to do is presuppose that there is an underlying historical question that could generate all of these three fairly inaccurately, whereas in the dispensational interpretation, it must be in the Matthean form and no other. We’ll return to that one as well.

B) Jesus’ answer to his disciples’ questions must have been, under this interpretation, not only opaque but out and out deceptive.

For at least part of their question has to do with the fall of Jerusalem. The question therefore that we must ask ourselves is this: “In the light of their question, could they have understood verses 15 and following as being a reference to anything other than the fall of Jerusalem which shortly took place in their own day?”

The answer is: Not likely. Indeed, there is no trace of any understanding of this dispensational pretribulational interpretation until the end of the 1770s. There is no indication that anyone in the early church understood it that way. That makes me a little nervous as well.

C) There are broader worries about this interpretation that have to do with the parenthesis view of the church and with a strict dichotomy between church and Israel.

These make me extremely nervous indeed, but I shall leave these broader conceptual and systematic matters aside.

2. Another interpretation that is common in evangelical circles treats each paragraph separately and simply scouts the temporal connections.

This is sustained, for example, in broadest commentary on Matthew or in Lane’s generally excellent commentary on Mark. In other words, verses 15 and following, all the way to 21, at least, perhaps farther, deals dramatically with the fall of Jerusalem.

Likewise, verse 34 deals with the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Then, chapter 24, verses 29–31 foretell Jesus’ return. In other words, it is argued, the disciples asked a rather confused question. They confused the fall of Jerusalem with the coming of the Lord, and so Jesus interweaves his response on these themes.

He turns to this part of the response and then to that part of the response. He flips back and forth because their question was confused so he could give, as it were, an answer in which the two themes they were interested in were interwoven.

This interpretation has one great strength. It seems to deal with each paragraph on its own hook. It seems to deal fairly with each paragraph, but it has a formidable weakness. It does not handle the time relationships very well.

For example, supposing you argue that down to 21 or down to 28 or thereabouts, you’re dealing with the tribulation period. Then Christ comes in verses 29 and following. “Immediately after the distress of those days, ‘the sun is darkened …’ ” Then verse 30. “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear …” You’re now talking about the Lord’s return.

Then in all fairness, you have great difficulty with verse 34. “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Or supposing then you put the Lord’s return after verse 30 or 31 or even after verse 36. In each instance, you have problems with either verse 34 or the preceding verses or something else. There are time parameters here that you have to deal with.

If the Lord, for example, comes in verses 26–28, that period, then you have accounted for the “immediately after the distress of those days,” but you have not accounted for the “this generation” of verse 34. The time constraints … They are the nemesis of interpretative theory after interpretative theory in these two chapters.

3. There is a third view that traces itself through the commentators Alexander, Kik, Tasker, and Dick France in his book Jesus and the Old Testament.

It is quite commonly associated with certain brands of amillennialism, though certainly not all. This does argue that the fall of Jerusalem is in view all the way to the end of verse 35.

A) It is argued that the disciples asked two questions.

First, “When will this happen?” That is, this destruction of Jerusalem. Second, “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” So Jesus answers these two questions, it is argued, in order. First, to do with Jerusalem, he describes the fall of the temple in AD 70 in verses 15 and following, and all the way down to the end of verse 35 that is what he is talking about.

So when we get down to verse 34, we have no time constraints that are difficult. “I tell you the truth,” he says, “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” It didn’t. It took place within 40 years of the Lord’s resurrection. So it seems to handle the time constraints very nicely indeed.

B) It is sometimes argued further that verses 9–28 describe the leading up to the tension and the fall of Jerusalem.

In other words, you find the Holy Place encircled, people fleeing across the rooftops of Jerusalem, those in the field running out into the caves and the mountainsides of Judea, the Sabbath still in operation, the pregnant women and nursing mothers in grave difficulty, but you still don’t have the fall of the temple.

C) The fall of the temple itself takes place, it is argued, in verses 29–31.

“Ah,” but you say. “When I read those three verses, it seems to me to refer to the Lord’s return.” (“At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky. The nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven.”) “Surely that isn’t a reference to the fall of the temple, is it?”

Well, they argue first that verse 29, which describes celestial disturbances, is really typical of a great number of passages in the Old Testament that are full of celestial symbolism when there are national and political disasters. Do we not find that quite commonly in Hebrew poetry? You might, when there is joy, find the hills dancing and the trees clapping their hands and when there are disasters, the stars are tumbling down into the sea and so forth.

You also read of that kind of thing, for example, in Isaiah 13:10 or again in Isaiah 34:4 and many other passages. So this is simply symbolic language to show that all of nature is involved as God vents his judging wrath on Jerusalem. Then in verse 30, it is argued, the Son of Man coming in glory and power is not Jesus’ return to earth, but as in Daniel 7, a heavenly coming to the Father for vindication.

This is a reference to Daniel, chapter 7, verses 13 and 14, where the “one like a son of man” approaches the Ancient of Days and receives from him a kingdom. So there is a sense in which the Son of Man is coming into his own, into his own reign with full authority as the temple is destroyed, it is argued. As the old covenant is abolished de facto as it has ultimately been abolished de jure with the cross.

So there is a sense in which the Son of Man is coming into his own authority as he receives further this reign from the Father. Moreover, it is argued, “the nations of the earth” is a mistranslation. It should be rather, “the tribes of the land.” In other words, we should read: “The Son of Man will appear in the sky …” (Metaphorically.) “… and all the tribes of the land will mourn,” because of the fall of the temple, because of the destruction and desecration of the land.

“They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky.” That is, they will recognize that he is really receiving this vindicating kingdom from the Ancient of Days. Then in verse 31, when the aggelos are sent with a loud trumpet call to gather the elect from the four winds, these are not angels. These are Christian missionaries. These are messengers.

After all, aggelos simply means messenger, so these are simply missionaries who, in the wake of the final collapse of Judaism and of the old covenant, are then sent out by the Lord to the far corners of the world to bring about the Gentile mission. So at least, it is argued.

This interpretation has a great strength: It handles the time sequences very neatly. In that respect, it is very much like dispensational pretribulationism. It handles the time constraints very neatly. Immediately after the distress up to verse 28, you then have the destruction of the temple (verses 29 and following). The “this generation” of verse 34 … It makes sense. It ties in within 40 years of Jesus’ utterance. Then it makes sense further of the questions back in verse 3. It also makes sense of verses 36 and following. Now you are dealing for the first time with the coming of the Lord.

But, it has great weaknesses. There are several. This whole view depends on seeing the text to verse 28 describe the events up to the fall of the temple and then verses 29 and following, the fall of the temple itself. But surely verses 21 and 22 do not talk of only the pre AD 70 destruction. “For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.” Surely that cannot be simply the pre AD 70 distress. That must be part of the distress itself or some other great tribulation.

Although, as you go through verses 29–30 you can pull out the little statements one by one (“Son of Man,” related to Daniel 7; “clouds of heaven,” indicating the presence of God; “receiving a kingdom from the Ancient of Days”; yes, aggelos might be messengers; yes, four winds might mean everywhere in the Gentile world; yes, “the nations of the earth” could be translated as “the tribes of the land”) if you pick them apart one by one, each one could just about mean what this interpretation suggests.

But, and it is a very big but, the concatenation of these themes together simply rings as the second coming to any Christian reader. You’ve got to really strain to make this passage refer to the fall of the temple in AD 70. To prove it, all you have to do is read a number of New Testament passages, which I shall briefly list for those of you who are taking notes, and you will discover that in each instance where two or three more of these elements come together you’re talking about the return of the Lord.

For example, in Matthew, chapter 13:40–41, the sending of the aggelos, the angels, to the four winds to bring in the elect. It’s talking about final harvest and judgment. First Thessalonians 4:14–17; Matthew 16:27, 25:31; 2 Thessalonians 1:7; 2 Peter 3:10–12, and many, many other passages.

Now in that light, therefore, it seems to me that these verses, only with the greatest degree of strain, can be made to refer to the destruction of the temple in AD 70. If we ask ourselves, “How would the first Christians have interpreted them?” I think, to be quite frank, they would’ve interpreted them to do with the Lord’s return.

Moreover, this theory posits much too close a connection between the fall of Jerusalem and the Gentile mission. You’ll recall that under this theory, Jerusalem falls in verses 29 and 30, and as a result the messengers, the missionaries, go to the four corners of the earth. But by the time Jerusalem fell in AD 70, the Gentile mission had been comfortably underway for three decades or so.

At first unofficially, of course, as Christians went everywhere gossiping the gospel and then increasingly under the missionary work of Paul and Barnabas and then Silas as well. It was well-established. Churches were everywhere in the empire, and the church was more predominantly Gentile than Jewish by AD 70. To speak of AD 70, therefore, as the climactic turning point, a kind of launching pad for the Gentile mission is simply, in fact, to ignore the history.

Although Christians did see AD 70 events as in some ways a vindication of Jesus, as in some ways a time where he received more uncontested authority, as a time that was a kind of turning point in the history of the church, it formally abolished the ritual center of the old covenant. Although Christians did see the fall of the temple in all of those terms, they also saw it as a great tragedy.

Under this description, the fall the temple should almost be a time of great rejoicing. Jesus is vindicated. Full stop. And that’s all. But that’s not the way they saw it. In fact, when you compare Daniel 7, you notice something rather shocking. Daniel 7, when “one like a son of man” receives this kingdom without end from the Father, Daniel 7 marks the end of the pagan emperor’s rule. But with a fall of the temple in AD 70, you mark the extension of the pagan emperor’s rule.

It turns out to be not only a vindication for Jesus in the religious realm. It turns out to be a pagan for Vespasian, who becomes Caesar in the political realm. “Ah,” someone says. “Yes, but maybe you have here a reverse typology.” So, France, for example. You have a reverse typology. Just as in the Old Testament the pagan emperor is destroyed by the “one like a son of man” who receives the kingdom, so in the New Testament the Jews become the pagans. A reverse typology. And thus they are destroyed.

Indeed, sometimes there are such reverse typologies in Scripture when the kinds of maledictions that are poured out upon the pagans in the Old Testament are transferred to the Jews in the New. But, this is much too harsh for a mere reverse typology. Could Christians see in the fall of Jerusalem their redemption (to use the language of Luke 21:28)? Your redemption draws nigh?

Verse 30 turns out to be problematic in any case. There we recall that they translate the expression found in the NIV “nations of the earth” by “tribes of the land.” Indeed, the particular word phylē that is rendered nations in the NIV is regularly rendered tribes throughout the New Testament with the exception of the book of Revelation, which is also, incidentally, apocalyptic literature like this. There it regularly does refer, in fact, to Gentiles.

So it seems in balance, therefore, that this expression, this interpretation is not best way to understand the text. Now there are several other interpretations that have been put forward, but the main point that I want to establish so far is that your interpretation of this passage is intimately bound up with its structure. The structure of this passage determines its interpretation.

Now I want to suggest to you another way of looking at it, and really what I present to you in this evening and the next two nights is simply an exposition that will justify the structure that I’m about to outline to you. In verse 3, when the disciples asked the question, “Tell us, when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” almost certainly, in their minds, the destruction of the temple, the coming of the Lord, and the end of the age are all roughly at the same time. Almost certainly.

They don’t have them all spatially set out. Therefore, to posit one question or two questions or three questions or whatever, is in a sense forcing the disciples into a clarity of thought that they didn’t have at this point in their pilgrimage. If you recognize that they are confused in their own thinking, it is very easy to harmonize the question recorded in Matthew 24 with that recorded in Mark 13 and Luke 21. If you think they have three unambiguously clear questions, there’s no way you can make that harmonization.

In the first place, we must postulate, I think, they were not too clear in their own minds about how such events were to be related. The burden of Jesus’ reply in the first instance is that there will be delay before the end. A delay characterized by opposition, persecution. This runs all the way down to chapter 24, verse 28. This whole period is called “the birth pains of the Messiah.” It’s one of the expressions commonly used in Judaism and it’s picked up in Matthew, chapter 24, verse 8. “All these are the beginning of birth pains.”

But there is one particularly sharp birth pain, I shall argue, having to do with chapter 24, verses 15–21, the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Then, I would want to argue, since the description of these birth pains characterizes the entire inter-advental period all the way through the first coming to the second coming of Christ, immediately after that inter-advental period (verse 29) is the return of Christ himself.

That takes us to verse 31. Then for various reasons we shall see, verses 32–35 purposely go back to assessing the significance of the signs in verses 4–28. It goes back to weighing them and assessing them. We shall see the exegetical reasons for this in due course. It remains then to justify these views and to see what they mean in our preaching, in our theology, in our eschatology. Tonight, in effect, what I’m dealing with is simply the birth pains of the Messiah.

1. The beginning of the birth pains

The expression itself occurs in verse 8, but it was common in intertestamental Judaism that before Messiah would come there would be a period of anguish, a period of birth pains. Just as a period before the birth itself is characterized by anguish, so the joy that would be brought about by Messiah’s return would be characterized by anguish.

Hence, the expression “the birth pains of the Messiah.” That is exactly the expression that Jesus himself uses in verse 8. What, then, are the essential characteristics of this period? There are characteristics to do with the world at large. They are two.

A) Continuous international rivalry

Verse 6: “You will hear of wars and rumor of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” Every once in a while we catch on our radio station some exuberant preacher of rather thoughtless mold who uses these two texts to prove that the Lord’s return must be near. But these verses prove precisely that the end is not yet. That’s what the text says.

Jesus, in other words, characterizes this entire period as one in which there will be international rivalry. Therefore, when we see nations rising, nations falling, when we hear of wars or rumor of wars, we shouldn’t think that these things are characteristic of the period just before the end and, therefore, surely the Lord must be on his way. “Because,” Jesus says, “these things must take place, but the end is not yet.”

That’s really quite shocking. I have in my shelf any number of books published between about 1936 (by which time it was clear that Mussolini and Hitler were more or less in power) all the way until about 1944 (by which time it was becoming painfully clear that they were going out) that prove conclusively that the Lord’s return is impending. It is almost there.

It is based in part in some instances identifying Mussolini with the Antichrist and in other parts by the sheer cataclysm of war that this century has known: World War I and then World War II. There were 70 million men, women, and children killed in World War II. Then another 20 million killed under Stalin. Estimates between 20 and 50 million human beings destroyed by Mao Zedong.

But the Scriptures say, there will be international rivalry. “Nations will rise. Nations will fall. There will be wars. There will be rumors of wars. The end is not yet.” This entire period of distress is characterized by international pain.