13:15-17
Jesus stresses the imperative of getting out quickly without any messing about. This may remind us of Lot’s wife being told not to look back to Sodom and Gomorrah when Lot and his family were urged to get out. Jesus does nothing to minimise the terror that will come, His aim is to stress the urgency of the matter.
13:18
The events are decreed by God, but this does not mean we should not take action, nor does it mean that we should not pray to God in a way that seems to influence events. The sovereignty of God does not mean that what we do, think or pray is irrelevant, that is clear from all of Scripture. So Jesus urges them to pray that the events will not happen in winter or the Sabbath (Matt 24:20). In winter the region was prone to flooding and escape would be difficult. On the Sabbath escape would be difficult because of all the Sabbath laws.
13:19
NKJV has the “great tribulation”, here, Jesus is not minimising the horror of what would happen. On a literalistic interpretation the words that such suffering would never be experienced equalled again could be taken as implying that the prophecy was indeed completely fulfilled in AD70. Josephus, the Jewish historian, described some of the suffering and it was truly awful. An alternative is that it does actually refer to the very end times. It is clear that there is at least some fulfillment in AD70, so it can not only be referring to the very end times. However, the view that it was fulfilled in AD 70 and that is that is extremely problematic. Most importantly, it does not fit with other parts of Scripture. Secondly, while the suffering was great, it would be difficult to say that equal or greater suffering has not happened anywhere else in history. It would seem to me that either Jesus is using hyperbole, or is saying Jerusalem would never suffer such suffering again. What is undoubtedly true is that the Jews have indeed suffered much greater suffering than AD70 during the holocaust.
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