MARK 13

MARK 13

THIS chapter should be read and studied carefully in connection with Matthew 24 and Luke 21. All three give us a report of our Lord’s Olivet discourse, in which He traced prophetically the conditions that were to prevail in Palestine and among the Gentile nations after His rejection and resurrection, including the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus, and going on to the climax: the second coming of the Son of Man and the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth in manifested power and glory. We look in vain for any mention in these chapters of the Church of the present dispensation. When Jesus spoke these words the truth as to the Body of Christ was still unrevealed. This mystery was not made known until given by special illumination to the Apostle Paul and through him to others some time after the present age of grace began.

Therefore in reading this great prophetic discourse we do well to recognize its strictly Jewish character. While it reveals much hitherto kept secret, there is no intimation in it of the origin, course or destiny of the Church, the heavenly people now linked by the Spirit with the risen Christ.

While many of those who heard this address were incorporated into that Church by the baptism in the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and after, yet all are viewed as the Jewish remnant waiting for the consummation of the Old Testament prophecy: the setting up of Messiah’s kingdom, when the once-rejected Servant of Jehovah shall return to rule the nations with the iron rod of inflexible righteousness, in accordance with the declaration of the second psalm. The elect in view throughout are therefore the early saints, both Jews and converted Gentiles in the last days—the seventieth week of Daniel 9—who are to be gathered from all parts of the world to welcome the King when He sets up His throne on Mount Zion.