The Clock That Has to Stop (3 of 4)

Jesus dates his own citation of Daniel, and dates it early. In Matthew 24:15 he tells his disciples to watch for "the abomination of desolation – spoken about by Daniel the prophet – standing in the holy place." Luke records the same speech for readers who might not know Daniel and puts the idea in plain language: "when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near" (Luke 21:20). The sign Jesus meant his hearers to act on has to be one that gives time to act. The encircling armies are that sign. A desecration of the temple itself, once it had happened, was too late for anyone inside the city to flee. A still-future event centuries away is no sign for these hearers at all. A tradition says some of them did flee: Eusebius records that the Jerusalem church left for Pella, across the Jordan, before the siege closed in, on a warning given to approved men "before the war," and Epiphanius reports the flight as well. The tradition is late, its historicity is disputed, and whether Epiphanius is independent of Eusebius is unsettled. The argument here does not rest on it. The instruction to flee does the work.²⁵

Notice who Jesus addresses. "When you see the abomination," "let those in Judea flee," "pray that your flight may not be in winter." The discourse is in the second person, to the disciples on the Mount of Olives, and nothing in it signals a jump from "you, now" to a different generation thousands of years later.²⁶ Futurists reply that Matthew 24:15 and Luke 21:20 describe the AD 70 event as a partial preview of a larger, still-future abomination.²⁷ That reply is argued seriously. It still has to explain why a sign given for people who could act on it is mainly about someone else. A second reply says the "you" is representative, the disciples standing for believers of any generation who will see the end. A representative address can carry the addressee forward in time. It cannot carry "this generation" forward, because that phrase is the discourse's time marker, and Matthew uses it six times of the people in front of Jesus.⁹⁹ The equation of Luke's armies with Matthew's abomination is argued here, not assumed: both accounts go on to the same command that those in Judea flee to the mountains (Luke 21:21; Matthew 24:16), and a futurist who takes them as two events has to say why one instruction to flee is given twice.¹⁰⁰

When these texts were written. The argument from Luke 21:20 carries weight only if the sign was given before the event, and a critic will say the "armies" wording was sharpened after AD 70. The essay does not assume an early date for the Gospels. It argues for one on a limited basis. Acts ends with Paul alive under house arrest in Rome (Acts 28:30–31). It reports neither his death nor Peter's, neither the Jewish war nor the temple's fall, though it narrates earlier persecutions and martyrdoms at length, and Luke's Gospel was written before it (Acts 1:1). If Acts was written after the war, that silence is hard to explain. If before, it is not. This is an argument from silence, and the critics' answer, that Luke had other reasons to stop where he did, was not surveyed here.²⁸ Two things limit the damage if the early date fails. The instruction to flee Judea stands in Mark and Matthew as well, in wording that does not depend on Luke's gloss (Mark 13:14–16; Matthew 24:15–18), and the temple's coming destruction is in all three accounts. What the early date buys is the claim that the "armies" wording is prediction, not description. Without it, that claim is weaker, and this essay holds it at that strength.

"This generation" means the people Jesus was talking to. Matthew uses the phrase six times in Jesus's teaching, five before the Olivet Discourse and once in it, and each time it means the people in front of him: "To what should I compare this generation?" (11:16); "The people of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it" (12:41); the queen of the South "will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it" (12:42); the story of the returning unclean spirit, which Jesus closes by applying it to the generation in front of him (12:45); "this generation will be held responsible for all these things!" (23:36). The use just before the discourse is decisive. Standing in the temple, Jesus says, "Look, your house is left to you desolate!" (23:38). He walks out, the disciples point at the buildings, and he tells them not one stone will be left on another. Their question follows. Reading 24:34 as a future generation means Matthew's phrase means one thing five times and something else the sixth, in the same conversation, about the same house. The next verse, 23:39, says they will not see him again until they greet him as the one who comes in the Lord's name, and a futurist hears in that Israel's national welcome at the second coming. That reading is open, and it is one reason Section 2 keeps the national question on the table. It is a statement about when they will see him, not a redefinition of "this generation" in 23:36 or 24:34.⁹⁹ Preterists of both kinds, and non-preterists such as R. T. France and N. T. Wright, read the phrase as Jesus's contemporaries. The futurists who dissent, Thomas Ice and John Walvoord among them, dissent on the phrase itself, not only on what follows.²⁹

Careful futurists mostly no longer defend the older reading that "generation" means the Jewish race. The live version ties "this generation" to the fig tree a few verses earlier: "Learn this parable from the fig tree: Whenever its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also you, when you see all these things, know that he is near, right at the door" (Matthew 24:32–33). The fig tree is read as Israel's national restoration, commonly dated to 1948, and "this generation" as whichever generation sees it bud. Luke's version settles what the fig tree is: "Look at the fig tree and all the other trees. When they sprout leaves, you see for yourselves and know that summer is now near. So also you, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near" (Luke 21:29–31). If the fig tree is national Israel, "all the other trees" have no referent. The tree illustrates how to read a season. It isn't a code for a nation. And the reading still faces the "you" of the discourse, the flight instructions, and Luke's gloss tying the desolation to armies that did surround Jerusalem within that generation's lifetime. Tying "this generation" to a future budding does not remove that pressure. It relocates it.