Luke 21:5-38 · Signs of the End of the Age
A Plan For Difficult Times
Luke 21:5-38
Sermon
by Theodore F. Schneider
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Appropriately Impressed!

They were impressed! Mark's gospel quotes the comment Jesus overhead in the opening of today's lesson: "Look Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" The contemporary Roman/Jewish historian Josephus writes that the temple "appeared from a distance like a snow-clad mountain, for all that was not overlaid with gold was of purest white." This temple built by Herod was as massive and awesome up close as it was at a distance.

Though called the Second Temple to this day, it was more honestly the third temple to be built upon this site. Solomon had built the first, constructing a flat platform, encompassing with retaining walls the outcropping of rock that had been Arunah's threshing floor, the location Solomon's father, David, had purchased as the site of the temple. Solomon's temple had stood for 370 years when it was first looted. A decade later, in 586 B.C.E., it was sacked and burned by the Babylonians.

After the exile the temple was rebuilt under the order and patronage of Cyrus, the king of Persia. More modest than the temple of Solomon, the temple was completed under Zerubbabel in 516 B.C.E. Herod the Great, the paranoid king of the Christmas birth narratives, rebuilt the temple of Zerubbabel. Despite his well-documented crimes and excesses, he was, nonetheless, a master builder whose skills cannot be denied. He determined that Jerusalem would be the most imposing of all of his work, and to win the loyalty and support of his Jewish subjects, he would rebuild the temple as the grandest of all of Jerusalem's buildings.

Building upon and extending beyond the foundations of Solomon and Zerubbabel, he nearly doubled the area of the temple mount, enclosing within the retaining walls an area of 35 acres! While it had taken Solomon's architects and artisans seven years and five months to complete the first temple, Herod's first stage of construction required a decade. The temple itself was begun in 20 B.C.E. and dedicated in 10 B.C.E. But according to Josephus, Herod's 18,000 workmen continued work until 63 C.E.

To enlarge the temple mount to enclose 35 acres, strong retaining walls had to be extended down into the Tyropoeon Valley to the west and down Ophel hill to the south. Ashlars, huge building blocks, were quarried, cut, faced and fitted without cement. All are proportionally large, but the largest measures 46 feet long by 10 feet high and 10 feet deep. Weighing 415 tons, it makes the stones of the Egyptian Pyramids - a mere 15 tons - to be as pebbles!2

"Noble stones" indeed! This was Herod's magnum opus. The Talmud says: "Whoever has not seen Jerusalem in its splendor has never seen a beautiful city."3 Pliny the Elder, a Roman scholar, writes of Jerusalem as "by far the most renowned city of the Orient and not of Judea only."4 Josephus writes that the temple is "more worthy of description than any other under the sun."5 Remarking about the height of the pinnacle of the temple (the southeast corner), he notes that anyone looking down to the Kidron Valley 100 yards below would become dizzy.6

Little wonder that Jesus overheard them speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings. And it is little wonder that many listened in stunned disbelief when he said on another occasion that he would destroy it and rebuild it again in three days. As Jesus lived, it had already been under construction for 46 years and that construction would continue three decades after Jesus' death!

On this day, however, there is no talk of rebuilding. There's just the terrifying prophecy: "As for these things you see, the days will come when there shall not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down (Luke 21:6)." That day would come just four decades later in 70 C.E. Those who read Luke's gospel knew the details of that day first hand. You see, Luke was writing on the other side of the temple's destruction.

When The Day Came

Sabbath by Sabbath and holy day by holy day, it was the custom of a priest to climb, with shofar in hand, to the top of the southwest corner of the temple mount at the beginning and at the end of the day, announcing both the day and its hour. The sound of this ram's horn could be heard throughout Jerusalem.

But on August 28 in the year 70 C.E., there was another sound. It was the sound of fire. The flames could be seen from Mount Zion (the upper city) as they climbed the pinnacle. Tradition says that this is the very same day that the Babylonians had put the torch to Solomon's temple in 586 B.C.E.

For nearly a month the people of the upper city held out against the siege and the power of Rome. But on September 20 the Romans overran the city, slaughtering the inhabitants and putting the entire city to the torch. Recent archaeological finds in the upper city confirm Josephus' account; in moot silence they give evidence of the fire, the haste and the carnage.

Forty years later, it had happened as Jesus had said. The 40-foot colonnades that surrounded the temple mount, the temple itself, and Herod's huge portico were all gone, pushed down and pulled over, rolling into the Tyropoeon Valley to the west and the Kidron Valley to the east, significantly lifting the levels of both valleys. For the most part, the stones remain to this day right where the Romans left them. Along the Western Wall, often called the Wailing Wall, there remain 25 courses of Herodian ashlars, 14 of which are visible and above ground. In Jesus' time, all were visible. The pinnacle of the temple overlooking the Kidron Valley stands at 141 feet, about half of its original height.

With the exception of these retaining walls, there was not one stone left upon another that was not thrown down. It was just as Jesus had said. The late first-century readers of Luke's gospel knew that it was so! Jesus' prediction had been incredible to the first hearers. When the day came, it was even more so.

When The Stars Begin To Fall

The prophet Malachi said, "Behold, the day comes, burning like an oven (Malachi 4:1)." It would be a day when God's judgment would burst upon the world, consuming the wicked and giving blessing and vindication to the righteous. But when the day came, it seemed that the wicked prevailed. Chaos reigned in communities and in religious life. It was as if the whole world was coming apart and the hope of the righteous dissolving. The old spiritual hymn suggests the disintegration of all of creation: "My Lord, what a mornin', when the stars begin to fall!"

The relentless and methodical manner in which the Romans destroyed the temple, leaving not one stone upon another, was the same manner in which Titus and his legions swept through all of Palestine. Though there were hundreds of first-century and earlier synagogues all through the land, modern archaeological search has not yet discovered a single example of a mid-first-century synagogue other than the one at Masada and another at Herodian, both personal fortresses built by Herod (and both thought to be restored in the late first and early second century).

Christians could take no glee in the devastation. They had been hounded by persecution from the beginning, first by the Jews and then by the Romans. This political and spiritual "ambush" deepened the suffering for Christians who understood themselves in the fullest sense to be Messianic Jews.

All that Jesus had said was as Luke's readers found themselves living it: "They will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my sake.... You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death; you will be hated by all for my name's sake (Luke 21:12, 16-17)."

Just as the temple had been the center of gravity for Hebrew identity, worship and hope, holding the "world of the faithful" in a reasonable orbit, now its tumbling stones had become the symbol of the disintegration of the Hebrew heritage on the one hand and the Messianic hope on the other. It was a terrifying time for Christian and Jew alike and may well explain why the Jews saw in Christians a threat and not a fulfillment. Worse still, there was no evidence that the righteous would prevail in either tradition.

The Call To Witness

Jesus' words brought great encouragement to the early Christians. Decades before it happened, Jesus had predicted it. This was no surprise in the timeline of salvation. This was no sudden reversal in the balance of power between God and Christ on the one hand and "the rulers of this present darkness ... the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places, as Paul would name them, on the other (Ephesians 6:12)."

The faithful are not without weapons. Standing with the whole armor of God, we have in our hands the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Jesus says it like this:

This will be a time for you to bear testimony. Settle it therefore in your minds, not to meditate before hand how to answer; for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict (Luke 21:12-15).

The enemy can be defeated. God's promises will prevail. These are the times that the faithful are called to stand tall. "These are the times," as Thomas Paine is often quoted, "that try men's souls." These are the times when the most powerful preaching is done. In the courage of a Stephen, the conversion of a Saul begins. These are the times when Luthers stand before hostile diets having nothing in their hands but the Word. These are the times when Bonhoeffers stand before Gestapo interrogators and compromise nothing.

Not A Hair On Your Head Shall Perish!

Virtually everything Jesus has said has been fulfilled except, perhaps, this one! History is filled with martyrs of the faith, Stephen was the first. The last are yet unnumbered and unnamed. Isn't it so!

But here again, the issue is the promise of God and the destination of the faithful. We are strangers and pilgrims on this earth. By baptism we have been made heirs of the kingdom and members of the commonwealth of heaven. We wait for a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. We shall not perish. To perish is to disappear, to cease to be. God has promised otherwise - from the cross: "Today you will be with me in Paradise (Luke 23:43)."

An English officer and a fellow prisoner wrote these words about the last hours of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

On Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship ... He had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians entered. They said, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us." That had only one meaning for all prisoners - the gallows. We said goodbye to him. He took me aside: "This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life." The next day he was hanged at Flossenburg.7

But What Does It All Mean

Without a doubt, this is a challenging and yet difficult text for us. We can understand it in its historical context, but what does it all mean for us? We are not likely to stand before diets, be tied to stakes, or to look into the noose of a gallows. And how do we understand the prediction of international wars, earthquakes, famines and the fireworks of the cosmos?

This is a style of writing popular among the Hebrews from the days of the exile and into the first century. There was the belief that the world of this "age" was evil and unredeemable. As the next "age" of righteousness breaks in with God's intervention, the powers of evil will rage until they are finally defeated and the righteous of God are vindicated. There were, of course, many variations on the basic theme. This "apocalyptic" style sought to bring eternal realities into earthly images that could be comprehended in this eschatological drama of the "last things." While prophetic in tone, it was written to encourage the faithful in its day. In the case of today's gospel, virtually all Jesus had predicted has already been fulfilled. Yet, its value then and now is significant because:

1. It believed firmly in God's power and intent to defeat the forces of evil. Folks in our generation have little sense of direction or of destiny. If salvation is believed at all, it is considered "universal."

2. Apocalyptic writings looked seriously upon the powers of evil, seeing a fearful and significant cosmic struggle. The ancient baptismal question is basic: "Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil and all of his empty promises?"8 We are called upon every day to decide, and we need to deal seriously with the "forces of evil."

3. Apocalyptic literature called upon its readers to decide, to stand firm and to join the battle for justice and righteousness. Precisely put, "Whose side are you on?"

All of which is the point to Jesus' answer to the very natural questions of his disciples: "How?" "When?" and "What will be the warning signs?"

Make no mistake, persecution is a fearful thing, be it political or spiritual in origin. But so, too, is the comfort of the unchallenged soul. Many can rise to the clarion call of a clear challenge. But in our time, the persecution of the faithful may be none other than the relative disinterest many others have in the gospel message. With an unclear enemy and unclear issues, we begin to blend into "sameness." The late William Barclay wrote: "The crisis of the present day is not theological: it is ethical. Christian theology is not really under attack, for there are few outside of the church sufficiently interested in it to assail it."9

Gardner C. Taylor comments further: "It is astonishing how much an American family will spend on physical fitness and how little time or interest or money it will invest in spiritual fitness. It is amazing how much attention parents will give to a balanced diet for a child's physical growth and how little attention they will pay to the child's moral and spiritual growth. Bread for the body, but no food for the soul. Cultivation of the mind, none of the heart."10

People in most of our congregations know little of persecution as the early church experienced it. Our homeland has been spared the marching armies for a century and a half, and ours is not a government hostile to our free worship. But the persecution of the church by indifference both within and without the body may well be far more effective than anything in the first century, and ultimately more fearful than either the legions in Palestine or the lions in the Coliseum of Rome.

Jesus' answer is as relevant today as it was to the first-century church: "This will be a time for you to bear testimony." The issue is not "when?" The call is to be faithful in the meantime.


1. Kathleen and Leen Ritmeyer, "Reconstructing Herod's Temple Mount in Jerusalem," Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. XV, No. 6, (Washington, D.C., November-December, 1989), p. 26. The quotation of Josephus is from The Jewish Wars, Book V, Chapter V.

2. Murray Stein, "How Herod Moved Gigantic Blocks to Construct the Temple Mount," Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. VIII, No. 3, (Washington, D.C., May-June, 1981), p. 42.

3. Benjamin Mazar, "Excavations of the Temple Mount Reveal Splendors of Herodian Jerusalem, Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. VI, No. 4, (Washington, D.C., July-August, 1980), pp. 45-46.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Andre Parrot, The Temple of Jerusalem, (London SCM, Press Ltd., 1957), p. 86.

7. John W. Doberstein, "Introduction," Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John W. Doberstein, translator, (New York, Harper and Row, Publishers, 1954), p. 18.

8. "The Affirmation of Baptism," The Lutheran Book of Worship, (Minneapolis, Augsburg/Fortress Publishing House, 1978), p. 199.

9. William Barclay, The Ten Commandments for Today, (New York, Harper and Row, Publishers, 1974), p. 9.

10. Gardner C. Taylor, "Homiletical Interpretation," Proclamation 2, Pentecost 3, Series C, Elizabeth Achtemeier, Gerhard Krodel, and Charles P. Price, editors, (Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1980), p. 57.

C.S.S. Publishing Company, UNTIL THE KING COMES, by Theodore F. Schneider