Mark 13:15 Commentary and Bible Study

When that time comes, Christ warns, don't let anyone in Jerusalem or nearby fortified cities hesitate. Don't go back for anything. You can imagine it. If the aircraft is in trouble and is crash-landing, don't reach up to the luggage locker. Get out! Flee from Jerusalem. The Lord expresses it with such urgency. You have got to move and move fast when you see the Roman armies compassing Jerusalem. The need to flee will be so urgent that there will not even be time to collect household items, nor time for those working in the fields to return to their homes first to get extra clothing. Very soon it will be impossible to get out of the city. You go at once, while you can and believers, we are sure, did exactly that, and therefore this warning of Christ was evidently known to them. But although Jerusalem will be attacked and the temple destroyed and terrible things will happen in the year A.D. 70, even that was not to be the final fulfilment of the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, because that literal destruction of Jerusalem, the great pivotal event which ended the Jewish worship in the temple and the whole of the Old Testament order – God, as it were, forcibly closed it down – that in its turn would be a picture of the very end of the age and the events that would take place in the distant future.