Mark 13:19 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

Navigator

Mark 13:19

Comments

Unless the Lord had brought that Roman horror to a standstill quickly, everybody would be killed. There would be no Jews left. They would all have been destroyed and massacred. God in his mercy was going to preserve a remnant even then. And while the temple would be destroyed, and the special Jewish era of privilege would be brought to an end, as well as the covenant made with that nation as a mixed multitude, it was still in the will of God that many individual Jews then and throughout the centuries would be saved. They would of course come into the Jewish Christian, Jewish-Gentile Christian church. They would be all together; Jewish and Gentile believers would be all one in Christ Jesus. But God knew exactly how many Jews there would be saved, and that he would keep the nation distinct to the end of time. So Christ says, ‘but for the elect’s sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened those days.’ He is not only speaking of those Jews alive in Jerusalem at the time it fell – some of them may have been elect but not yet converted – he is also speaking of the elect who would be descended from unbelieving Jews living at the time. For if all Jews had died, there would be none left to have descendants, and then those elect Jews who would be descended from them would never have been born. God knows each one of them, and he knows who must live in order to have descendants who will hear the call of the gospel in years and centuries to follow. It might only be a minority of the whole group, but for the sake of those Jews who would be saved down the centuries, the nation was not entirely obliterated.

Application

Questions

There are difficulties in understanding these two verses. Josephus writes of the terrible events at the fall of Jerusalem: ‘But when they [the Romans] went in numbers into the lanes of the city, with their swords drawn, they slew those whom they overtook, without mercy, and set fire to the houses wither the Jews were fled, and burnt every soul in them, and laid waste a great many of the rest; and when they were come to the houses to plunder them, they found in them entire families of dead men, and the upper rooms full of dead corpses, that is of such as died by the famine; they then stood in a horror at this sight, and went out without touching anything. But although they had this commiseration for such as were destroyed in that manner, yet had they not the same for those that were still alive, but they ran every one through whom they met with, and obstructed the very lanes with their dead bodies, and made the whole city run down with blood, to such a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with these men's blood.’ This was indeed horrific, and yet it is hard to see how it could be described as ‘such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be.’ For this reason some say that Christ moves in verse 19 from describing the fall of Jerusalem to describing the end of the world. The surpassingly terrible events then refer not to the fall of Jerusalem, but to the final end of all things. However that is problematic because, later in verse 21 Christ refers to a time after this – ‘then, if any man shall say to you …’ – and in verse 24 he refers to events still later – ‘But in those days, after that tribulation …’ – and therefore we have not yet come to the very end. In verse 19, he is still speaking of the fall of Jerusalem, as also in verse 20. One way to understand this is to say that, terrible as it was, the fall of Jerusalem is a picture of a yet greater horror that will occur at the end of the world. The words he uses borrow the language of two Old Testament passages: ‘There shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time’ (Daniel 12:1); ‘Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand; ² A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations’ (Joel 2:1-2). (The first of these passages goes on to say ‘at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book’ (Daniel 12:1), which refers to the elect whom Christ also speaks of here.) It may be that the horrors of the fall of Jerusalem are illustrative of yet greater horrors at the end of the world.

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Mark 13:19 Commentary and Bible Study