Mark 13:2 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Mark 13:2

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Christ then replies to them: ‘Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.’ The building they are so impressed with will not last but will be destroyed. He who knows all future events prophesies that it will be destroyed so violently that not one stone will be left standing on another: they are wrong to be impressed with an earthly building, however magnificent. The Lord had already commented upon the coming destruction of Jerusalem. He had wept in the temple: ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! ³⁸ Behold, your house is left unto you desolate’ (Matthew 23:37-38). Now he speaks more directly of the destruction of the temple. In A.D. 70, when Titus the Roman general came to Jerusalem and destroyed the city, that literally happened. Titus built great structures of wood around the temple and he loaded them with inflammable wood, and he set light to it so that there would be intense fire for hours, and the great marble stones were cracked and broken and they could be more readily smashed up and they were smashed up, and they were removed – most of them – and cast into the Brook Kidron down in the valley. Everything was taken and the city was smashed up, razed to the ground, and people suffered terribly.

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Why was it allowed to happen? Why should there be such destruction? The immediate cause was that there was rebellion and war against the Roman authority on the part of the Jews, and they had to be crushed; they had to be punished. The Roman Empire was relatively peaceful if all is well, but rebellion was crushed with great violence and cruelty. But why did God allow this to happen to the nation which he had privileged for so long? Because they had always been a rebellious people, killing the prophets and stoning those sent unto them, and now they were about to fulfil the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, which Christ had just given them, and to kill the Son also. God’s patience with them as a nation was exhausted. There would still be elect Jews saved, but the national covenant by which God dealt with them as a political entity was going to end soon. Salvation was always by faith, and those descendants of Abraham, who assumed they would be blessed because of their blood relationship with him, were no longer to be privileged. So in A.D. 70 their temple and their worship were to be brought to a close.

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Mark 13:2 Commentary and Bible Study