If I do it right, I can point in one direction, snatch one of my son’s dinosaur chicken nuggets, and consume it without him noticing. But eventually, he’ll look back at his plate and notice that something is missing, and we’ll all have a good laugh. Or at least one of us will.
That’s how I feel having taken a fresh look at Mark 13. For example, what do you see when you read this passage?
But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. (Mark 13:24–27, emphasis added)
Popular interpretations of this passage had me looking in one direction: obviously, this is about Christ’s return, right? But no, something has gone missing. Or, rather, by our popular misreading of this passage, we have missed what’s right in front of us. In this essay I will take you into the pastor’s study to show how I came to see that in Mark 13 Jesus is actually talking about the cross.[1] The journey from the Mount of Olives to the cross takes place in four steps. But first, let’s begin where Mark does and have a seat with Jesus on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple.
1. I am indebted to Peter Bolt and his book, The Cross from a Distance: Atonement in Mark’s Gospel for this argument and many of the exegetical insights that contribute to it. In fact, this essay surveys the view that Bolt argues for in more detail—in detail I can’t go into here. This essay is an expansion on a sermon titled, “Be On Your Guard,” preached at Heritage Bible Church in Greer, SC, March 7, 2021. If this brief survey piques your interest, I highly recommend reading Bolt’s book for further study. Peter G. Bolt, The Cross from a Distance: Atonement in Mark’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: IVP Academic, 2004).
Sometimes It’s Hard to See What’s Right in Front of Us
When Mark 13 begins, Jesus leaves the temple with his disciples, who offer their famous reaction: “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” (Mark 13:1). Maybe they were awestruck with the architecture. Maybe they were speaking about the glory of the temple in God’s plan. Whatever the case, Jesus’s disciples saw the temple, but they did not truly understand what they were looking at. Jesus had a different take: “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Mark 13:2). Then Jesus started talking about “the end” (Mark 13:7, 13). That’s why this Olivet Discourse is called an apocalyptic discourse.
The two most common interpretations of Jesus’s words here are that either he is talking about the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. or else his second coming. There are good enough reasons for that. The physical stones of the temple were thrown down when Rome sacked Jerusalem in AD 70, and this caused religious upheavals (false messiahs), international upheavals (wars and rumors of wars), and natural upheavals (earthquakes and famines), all of which Jesus declares will happen before “the end” comes (Mark 13:7). All of these signs fit with the destruction of the temple, but could also be applied to the second coming. Moreover, the warnings Jesus gives are easy to apply to our present situation as we await Jesus’s return. Disciples should expect trouble before governors, among family, and to be hated by all for Jesus’s sake (Mark 13:9–13). “See that no one leads you astray,” Jesus warns (Mark 13:5). “Be on your guard” (Mark 13:9, 23, 33). “Stay awake” (Mark 13:33, 35, 37). All of these descriptions and warnings can lead the reader of Mark’s gospel to look toward a future apocalypse.
But on a second look, there are discrepancies. The destruction of the temple in Israel’s socio-political experience seems incongruent with the cosmic scope of Jesus’s speech, and even anti-climactic. And as for the second coming, we have to reckon with Jesus’s emphatic promise: “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mark 13:30–31).
We find ourselves not only asking with the disciples, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign . . .? (Mark 13:4), but also “what are these things?” Where is Mark pointing us? If we want to figure this out, we need to focus on four particular areas.
First, Count the Days.
Jesus’s apocalyptic discourse comes at the end of three days in which he had made the same journey from Bethany in the morning, out to Jerusalem and the temple, and then back in the evening. With each day, the action slows down and the tension ratches up.
On the first day Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a colt, enters the city from the Mount of Olives, and thereby demonstrates that Israel’s Messiah has arrived (Zech. 9:9; 14:4; Mark 11:1–11). Jesus enters the temple (Mark 11:11), and our expectation heightens, for the book of Mark opened with a quotation from Malachi concerning the Lord’s promise to come to his temple in judgment (Mal. 3:1; Mark 1:2–3). What will Jesus do? Not much. He enters, looks around, and goes home (Mark 11:11b). This is not what we expected, but he now has our attention.
Heading out from Bethany on the second day, Jesus curses a fig tree without figs (Mark 11:12–14) before he enters the temple complex and turns over the money changers’ tables (Mark 11:15–19; cf. Zech. 14:20–21). Jesus didn’t just cleanse the temple. As the Lord who comes in judgment, he shut it down. When Jesus and his disciples pass by the same tree the following morning, Jesus offers a curious interpretation: “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him” (Mark 11:23).
It’s at the end of that third day when Jesus sits down “on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple” (Mark 13:3) and gives his apocalyptic speech. This is his longest speech and his last teaching before his passion begins.
What exactly is Jesus up to here? Jesus is signaling the end of Israel’s days have come. Israel is the fruitless tree and Israel is about to become, figuratively speaking, a level plain (Zech. 14:4). When Jesus curses the temple, he enacts a parable of what he did in clearing out the temple, which itself is symbolic for what Jesus is doing to Israel. Increasing conflict on the third day between Jesus and Israel’s leaders (Mark 11:27–12:40) makes it clear that the time has come for judgment.
Mark has our attention. Where should we be looking now?
Second, Don’t Forget to Watch the Characters.
Jesus also had the attention of his disciples. This is a short but important step in our effort to see where Mark is pointing us. Mark’s gospel was written for Mark’s audience, but let’s not forget who Jesus was speaking to in the narrative. We might miss what Mark is doing and what Jesus is saying if we miss the experience of Jesus’s disciples in the story.
For three days they have been with him out to Jerusalem and back. For three days they have experienced the increasing conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders who seem now intent on killing him. And at the end of these days, a day before his betrayal and arrest, they sit with him opposite the temple and listen.
What did Jesus’s disciples need to hear in that moment? Could it be that Jesus’s words in Mark 13 are given to prepare them for his coming crucifixion?
Let’s keep looking.
Third, Follow the Sequence of Three Events.
Looking at the temple, Jesus told his disciples to look for a sequence of three events: 1) the sun being darkened, 2) the Son of Man coming in the clouds, and 3) the sending out of angels to gather his elect from the ends of the earth (Mark 13:24–27).
These events would be preceded by the upheavals of this present age of which Jesus spoke. They would be immediately preceded by a horrendous act of sacrilege of the kind the world has never seen and never would see again, “the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be” (Mark 13:14, 19). It would be a time of great distress (Mark 13:14–18). So great an evil would occur that if the Lord did not cut the time short it would swallow up the whole world (Mark 13:20). And in all this Mark adds the important phrase, “Let the reader understand” (Mark 13:14). Apparently, Mark’s readers should know something the characters in the story do not.
Whatever this great cataclysm was, it was to happen in the lifetime of Jesus’s disciples (Mark 13:30). And it would be followed by the darkening of the sun, the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds, and the gathering of God’s elect.
When did all this happen?
Finally, Watch the Clock.
Mark has walked us through the calendar of three days and now he points to the hour (the clock).
But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows . . . Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning—lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake. (Mark 13:32, 35–37, emphasis added)
Evening, midnight, dawn, morning—with these time markers of Mark 13:35, Jesus gives his disciples an outline for the great tribulation of the very next day, a day in which so much of what Jesus said on that mountain would occur.[2]
2. “Day” here is inclusive, speaking of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. The third time reference—“in the morning”—was not technically in the same twenty-four hour period. “The Day”—an Old Testament concept—was a day of both judgment and salvation, and thus in this sense it is fitting to consider Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection as a single Day.
The disciples were with Jesus the next “evening” when he instituted the Lord’s Supper (Mark 14:12). It was at that time that Judas was led astray. They were with Jesus in Gethsemane at midnight. They should have “stay[ed] awake” (Mark 13:37) and prayed while Jesus agonized there, but they didn’t (Mark 14:37–38). When “the hour” finally came, they “left him and fled” (Mark 14:41, 50).
When the “rooster crowed,” Peter remembered Jesus words, realized what he had done in denying his Lord, and wept (Mark 14:72). Jesus was crucified, an act of sacrilege of which the world has never seen and never would see again, and the sky went dark (Mark 13:24; 15:33). Israel’s leaders had committed the final and greatest act of rebellion the world would ever see, a desecration of the very temple of God himself. Which makes sense of why Jesus used the disciples’ admiration of the temple stones as a launching point for his speech.
But God did not let the evil of humanity go on forever. In fact, he raised the Lord Jesus from the dead, and he did so three days later “very early on the first day of the week,” that is, in the morning (Mark 16:2).
It was a quiet morning, yet a morning of great power and glory for the reader who understands. Long before it occurred, the prophet Daniel described what would happen on this morning: the beastly nations of the world would be overthrown, and all authority would be given to a human figure called a Son of Man for judgment and the establishment of God’s kingdom (Dan. 7:1–14). Daniel asked when this would occur and was told that he would not live to see it (Dan. 12:1–4). But Jesus told his disciples that they would see it (Mark 13:30). Jesus’s resurrection is nothing less than the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds. This apocalyptic and poetic picture took place on the morning of the resurrection. As Matthew would tell us, it was at that time that “all authority” was given to the Son (Matt 28:18). And with that authority Jesus sent out his disciples—or his messengers (it’s the same Greek word translated as “angels”)—to the end of the earth (Mark 13:27; Matt. 28:19–20; Acts 1:8).
Jesus sat down across from the temple and talked about the end of the world. The next day he brought about the end of the world as we know it. Through his resurrection from the dead, he brings us with him into his glorious kingdom.
So, What Have We Been Missing After All?
When Mark wrote, “let the reader understand,” he indicated that we were to pick up on something that the disciples did not grasp in the moment (Mark 13:14). That is because when Jesus first spoke these words, he had not yet been crucified. But by the time Mark was written (and thus, by the time there was a “reader”), Jesus had been crucified and raised. Thus, we are to understand that Jesus was speaking of his own crucifixion and exaltation.
If we see all the events described in Mark 13 as describing Jesus’s future return, what do we miss? We miss the cross and resurrection of Jesus. We miss the measure of our Lord’s suffering for us. Beyond that, a future-oriented reading of Mark 13 must envision an act of sacrilege that surpasses that of the cross (Mark 13:14). How could there be a greater sacrilege than God himself being sacrificed on Golgotha? On the cross Jesus was so identified with the sins he was bearing that later texts could say “He became sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21). What is more abominable than the sins of Jesus’s people concentrated in one man? This was the darkest day the world and heaven has ever known or will know.
A future-oriented reading also misses the significance of Jesus’s own body as the temple, the very way to God (Mark 13:2). The cross and resurrection must not be missed. Fortunately, their significance is so well attested that we cannot miss them even if we misinterpret one passage. But a more careful reading of Mark means we will see them even more clearly for all that they are.
So, Christian, remember the characters in the story, count the days, watch the clock. As you read Mark’s gospel look where Mark is pointing you, to the crucified and risen Lord Jesus. But don’t stop there, for Jesus calls all of us to the path of the cross. So, keep watch, stay awake, and pray. For in as much as Mark 13 is about the path of the cross and the promise of resurrection, it is about the Christian life as we await Jesus’s return. Yes, this passage has profound application to Christians in light of Jesus’s second coming. Jesus prepared his disciples for the worst to come and for all that would come after that. Yes, today we will face very great tribulation ourselves, for we follow Jesus on the path of the cross, just as he called us.
