The Olivet Discourse

I was recently asked by a friend to provide some thoughts on the Olivet Discourse found in each of the Synoptic Gospels.  You can check out Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21 for the verses I will be addressing.  They are far too vast for me to copy and paste here.

I do have a few thoughts after I read over these passages again, but I should warn the reader that I won't have anything extraordinary to say.  I don't know Greek, I am not gonna do an exegesis of each verse, and I truthfully don't understand all the text myself...who does?

I will say that the passages strike me as a mix-match of prophecies concerning multiple events...the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, the persecution of the early believers by Rome, and the Second Coming of Christ.It is terribly difficult to be exact about any of the verses in my opinion, particularly the ones that seem to refer to the end times.  I don't think we were meant to when I read Mark 13:32

“But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."


I also think that we should go ahead and deal with the primary exhortation of these verses regardless of what they refer to.  Jesus tells us the main point of all his prophecies at the end of the passage when he says the following in Mark 13:35-37

"Therefore stay awake...lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake."


I do fear that far too many pastors and believers get overly concerned with end times talk.  If such people put as much effort into serving others, delving into God's Word on the core doctrines, and relational sharing of the gospel as they do with hypotheticals on what the Mark of the Beast will be; the cause of Christ (which is the Glory of the Lord) would be much more magnified in their lives.

My most fundamental eschatology is this:

"Jesus IS coming back visibly.  He will judge the world at that time and all who have lived in it across history.  He will bring his saints into eternal glory and fellowship with the Father in their ressurected bodies.  He will cast those who rejected him into a Lake of Fire to endure eternal torment.  Each day of our timeline is a day closer to that event."

If I was really pushed on it I would call myself a partial preterist.  I think that the vast majority of the stuff in the Olivet Discourse came to pass in the first century.  I would also be an amillenial guy, that is, I think that the talk about a 1000 year reign in Revelation 20 is largely symbolic.  I believe that that period (the *1000 years*) is the church age that we live in now where Christ reign at the right hand of the Father and rules in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

We should remember that the Bible is a collection of books at its core.  It is certainly inspired by God and absolutely infallible, but it is also written via the means of poetry and symbolism at times.  I think that the 1000 years is part of that poetic narrative describing the age we live in.  I am nervous because all the pre-trib and pre-mil stuff out there, like "Left Behind" and "Late Great Planet Earth," appear to me as being full of junk that feeds the fleshly desire to know things that God says we can't know.  Ultimately, attention on the end times distracts from the true gospel message more than it pushes people into frenzied evangelism.

I think that Luke 21:34 says it best...

“But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap"


This statement is both applied  in a very physical sense to those believers present at the destruction of the temple and those persecuted before Constantine legalized the faith.  It is also a statement that certainly applies to all believers spiritually.  We need to make constant war against our flesh to keep from being drawn down into worldly matters because a day is coming (at an unknown hour) when our bridegroom will appear to take us home.  We want to be as ready for him as we can be.  That's the fundamental message I take from the Olivet Discourse.