Luke 21:20 Commentary and Bible Study

The fact that we must all die, that we must all be summoned to appear before God: these are things which ought to be obvious to us, things we can't change, certain appointments which we have to keep. This whole subject matter almost inevitably leads us to a consideration of the end of the age. How it will end? If the Word of God can predict and prophesy as it can, because its author is God who has predetermined these things; if it can prophesy and predict, what does it teach us about the end of this dispensation? After all, time is only a phase in God's eternal plan. God determined when the world should be brought into being, when time would begin. So too God has determined when it will end. Now the Scriptures teach that no man will ever know the time or the hour precisely. It will always be withheld from the mind of man to know precisely when time will be brought to a halt by God. But the Lord Jesus Christ clearly teaches this: that there are certain general trends, certain events, that will proceed the end of the age as God has ordained it, and these things can be recognized. So we shall know when it is imminent. It is possible to know as the day approaches. Nothing more precisely than that, but that much it is possible to know. In Luke chapter 21, there is the record of the teaching of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, on this very subject. The same material is also recorded in Matthew 24 and in Mark 13, but Luke has some content not found in the other Gospels.The disciples were provincial men – they were not from the city of Jerusalem – and they had been somewhat overawed by the great buildings of the temple, by its splendour. They were deeply impressed and they called the attention of their Lord to these great buildings, pointing out the way they were constructed, the magnificence of the temple. And the Lord Jesus Christ answered them by giving them a summary of events that would take place up to the end, and his return to bring in the final judgment. The way the disciples had asked this question showed that in their minds the destruction of the temple must mark the end of the world, but Christ separated out these two events. The question is found in this chapter in verse 7. They asked him saying, ‘Master, but when shall these things be? and what sign will there be when these things shall come to pass?’ In fact they asked another question. Matthew and Mark record the same two questions and add another: ‘And what shall be the sign of thy coming?’ (Matthew 24:3). From the Lord’s answer we realize that the question included an error. They had assumed too much, and Lord Jesus Christ’s answer is calculated to show them, first of all, the error in their question, because the answer is that these are two quite separate occasions. The temple was to be destroyed and the city of Jerusalem was to be besieged and utterly razed to the ground on one occasion. Whereas the coming of the Lord and the end of time was to be a second occasion separated from it by many, many centuries. There was an important reason why the Lord Jesus Christ made two great predictions together: one concerning something that would happen 40 years from the time when he spoke, and the other concerning what would happen centuries later. He did it so that having heard the first and seen it fulfilled, we may have our faith strengthened and increased. We may find it that much more possible to believe him when he speaks about the greater long-term event.‘Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.’ This is the great warning concerning the first event, given by Christ to his disciples who will be in the region when it takes place. He said even more than this – we have got a kind of telescoped edition in the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of Matthew, we find it given out in slightly more detail at this point. The precise place and the manner, the haste with which they must go. The siege will be very, very sudden. The collapse of the city will be sudden, and those who are members of the Christian church must flee, and leave everything. They must go to a particular place in the Judean mountains, and so it worked out that there was just one region in the surrounding countryside that turned out to be safe from the Roman invasion. This is a simple matter of history. Nobody could have foreseen this at the time, one puppet vassal king under Rome, one man with whom the Romans were well pleased. There was one small chunk of Judean territory up in the mountainous area where there was no invasion, no wholesale bloodshed and murder, and that was the place where the early Christians had been instructed to flee. It was normal for citizens facing an invading army to flee from the countryside into the fortified cities, and it was normal for those in the cities to feel safest, but in this case that would be entirely the wrong thing to do, because they would then be trapped. Hence the need for this warning, and for the disciples of Christ to do what seemed counterintuitive.‘For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.’ This is not just going to be a violent suppression by an occupying power with reinforced armies. This is a divine judgment on the nation which will be unlike any other judgment they have known in their history. God’s patience with Israel is at last exhausted, and so what is about to follow will is terrible, and inescapable, and final. The only remedy is to follow the directions of Christ to get away from the city.