Jesus began his Olivet Discourse with a sharp warning: Beware
deceivers who claim his authority and spread rumors about wars, earthquakes and
other calamities. Such men will succeed in “deceiving many.”
(Matthew 24:4-8) – “Beware that no man deceive you. For
many shall come upon my name, saying, I am the Christ; and shall deceive many.
And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not troubled:
for these things must come to pass; but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise
against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines and
earthquakes in different places. But all these things are a beginning of birth
pains” (Mark 13:5-8; Luke 21:8-11).
This warning is repeated several times in the Olivet Discourse; “many
false prophets will arise and deceive many” (Matthew 24:11); false
messiahs and false prophets will show signs and wonders “to deceive even the
very elect” (24:24-25).
Jesus provides a list of calamitous events that are NOT signs of
the end, some of the very “signs” to which deceivers point as evidence of the
end’s proximity. The stress falls on what the disciples will “hear” about such
signs, presumably from deceivers. The point is not that such disasters will not
occur, but that they are not signs of the end; they are not keys that decode prophetic
timetables.
Tragically, Christ’s words often have been used to provide lists
of prophetic “signs of the times,” the very things Jesus explicitly said do not
signal the end. In this Discourse, he responded to his
disciples and employed the Greek plural pronoun or “you” in doing so (“ye” in
the King James Version). He described things they would “hear.”
The Discourse was addressed in the first place to the disciples of
Jesus who lived in the first “Christian generation.” The disciples do represent
a larger group but remain constituent parts of it. Projecting this warning
exclusively onto a “generation” that is centuries into the future ignores the
literary context and historical setting.
Deceivers
Christ’s warning about deceivers is placed first because it is
central to his Discourse. Deceivers and false prophets have plagued the church
since its inception; there is a long history of heightened end-time
expectations followed by disappointment and apostasy due to preachers that
disseminate false information and point to false “signs.”
“For many will come upon the basis
of my name.” The Greek conjunction gar or
“for” introduces this explanation. Many are deceived because false prophets
make claims “on the basis of (epi)” Christ’s name; that is, on his
authority. The target of deceivers is not the world in general but believers.
Natural and Man-made Disasters
Jesus continues: “moreover (de), you
will hear of wars and reports of wars.” The
conjunction de indicates further development of a subject. The
Greek for “rumors” or “reports” signifies something that is heard.
The stress is on the content of what the disciples will hear from
the deceivers. “Reports of wars” reiterates the point – this is what you
will hear, reports about wars and earthquakes occurring in different places.
The issue is not whether wars occur or the accuracy of said
reports, but the source of the reports. False prophets and other
deceivers spread rumors of wars to raise prophetic expectations (cp. 2
Thessalonians 2:1-4).
Jesus affirms that human and natural catastrophes will occur;
earthquakes, wars, political upheavals, famines, plagues, “terrors and great
signs from heaven,” but disciples must “not be alarmed; the
end is not yet.”
Chaos and violence characterize all eras of human history and
cannot be used to calculate the time of the end (“the end is not yet”).
At most, they are a “beginning of birth-pangs,” harbingers of the
eventual consummation of this age, proof that the present age cannot continue
forever. They mark a “beginning”, not an end. Jesus acknowledges that such
things do occur but he does not refer to them as “signs.”
The Beginning of the End
The words, “these things must come to pass,” allude
to Daniel 2:26-28 where a dream was revealed to Nebuchadnezzar.
The soothsayers and astrologers of Babylon failed to disclose and
interpret the king’s dream; only Daniel did so and by the intervention of
Yahweh. He prefaced his remarks to the king, “there is a God in heaven who
reveals mysteries; he has shown the king what things must come to pass in
the latter days” (Septuagint version).
This allusion links Christ’s reference to the “beginning of
labor pains” to the “latter days” in the passage from Daniel. In the
New Testament, the death and resurrection of Jesus mark the start of the “last
days,” the time of fulfillment (cp. Acts 2:16-21; Hebrews
1:1-3).
Birth Pains
The image of “birth-pains” is common in scripture for the
suddenness and inevitability of destruction, not for the frequency or intensity
of an event (cp. Isaiah 26:17; 66:8; Jeremiah
6:24; 13:21; Hosea 13:13; Micah 4:9; 1
Thessalonians 5:1-3). Nowhere does Jesus predict increases in frequency or the intensity of any of the listed calamities, whether in his day, throughout the
long history ahead, or during history’s “last generation.”
Attempts to calculate future chronologies by wars, earthquakes,
and the like, are problematic. Such catastrophes occur with regularity. What
distinguishes one war or earthquake from another, at least in prophetic terms?
Jesus provides no insight on such matters. Instead, he exhorts disciples NOT to
be alarmed when disasters occur, as they inevitably will.
The Season is Near
Luke’s version adds an interesting element: “many will
come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The season is at hand’”
(Luke 21:8-9). This confirms that deceivers will point to wars and
calamities as evidence or “signs” of the end.
What “season” does Jesus mean? Several paragraphs later he warns
that no one “knows of that day and hour” when the Son of Man will
arrive, except “the Father ALONE” (Matthew 24:36; Mark
13:32-33). Disciples must “watch and pray, for you know not when the
season (kairos) is.”
Jesus is alluding to Daniel 12:4 where Daniel was
told: “to seal up the words and the book, even until the season (kairos) of
the end” (Septuagint). Deceivers who claim to know the timing of the
end presume to know what Jesus stated God alone knows. Such a claim marks
someone out as a deceiver. “Do not follow him!”
A Warning to Avoid Deceivers
Christ’s point in this first paragraph is not to provide “signs of
the times” by which one can ascertain the end’s proximity, but to warn
disciples not to heed claims by deceivers who point to manmade and natural
catastrophes as “signs” of the end.
Disciples must not be alarmed by such claims or actual events.
Wars and natural disasters will occur but at best evidence the inevitable end
of the age. They characterize the entire period of human history under the
dominion of sin and Satan.
An irony is that the very deceivers who spread rumors about such
“signs” are themselves indisputable evidence that the “last days” are already
underway, however long that period might endure.
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