Yeshua spoke of a coming event, the Desolating Sacrilege (Abomination of Desolation is another common translation). What was he referring to? Caligula’s intent to put a statue in the Temple in 40 CE? The coming Jewish war with Rome in 66-70 CE? Or the end of the age and anti-Christ?
Supposedly, Yeshua was a mistaken prophet. He thought his death would bring about the apocalypse and the soon end of the age. So a common reading of Mark 13 is that Yeshua was thinking of the Jewish war with Rome and was simply wrong. But have these views properly taken into account Yeshua’s (and Mark’s) theme of the delay of the End?
COMING: The children’s book is still being developed and will be beautiful. An audio-commentary on Mark should be available by early June. Yeshua for Small Groups is coming soon.
LISTEN ONE OF TWO WAYS:
(1) Subscribe on iTunes. Search the iTunes Store for Yeshua and find us under Podcasts.
(2) Or go to this link at DerekLeman.com.
I enjoyed the podcast today; of course, I’m almost guarunteed to when the subject is prophecy.
A point that you did not address either way was that it is very common in Biblical prophecy to have multiple fulfillments. For example, the Almahs’ Child in Isaiah 7–is this Child a sign to Ahaz of his near deliverance from the Samaria/Damascus alliance, or a sign to the House of David of the Holy One’s fidelity which would only be seen 700 years later? The answer is probably both, with Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz being the near fulfillment and Yeshua being the far.
Under this view, Yeshua was speaking of both the coming destruction of the Temple and His Second Coming. Luke’s version is either a related prophecy that He gave in the Temple or a deliberate midrashic paraphrase by Luke and Paul to emphasize the Temple judgment.
I’ve got an article at http://returnofbenjamin.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/multiple-fulfillments-of-prophecy/ going into this subject in more detail if you are interested.
Shalom