Mark 13 is filled with apocalyptic symbolism and prophecy—but is it pointing to what we presume it us? We’re going to do a quick and dirty crash course in the genre of Jewish apocalypse. We’re going to clarify and clean up the reality and wrong assumptions about prophecy in Scripture. And we will find out what eschatology means and how it relates to Mark 13, if at all.
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Mark 13 (or you may be hearing this when we revisit this material in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 on the radio in the future) is very intense and probably the most written about and debated about section of this Gospel. It’s also one of the most abused because it is very easily abused when we don’t pay very close attention to what is and is not being asked, what is and is not being answered, and most importantly, the genre of apocalypticism. Unfortunately, scholars who study the Bible as a lifetime work are not the go-to voices in the world of Christianity—people like Tim LaHaye and others who have made fortunes off of selling a alternative view of this important Jewish mode of expression sadly are the voices getting the most attention. And why not? They portray apocalypses as lurid forms of entertainment, presenting us with promises of death and destruction and Christians being violent, lying, stealing and whatnot in the name of God during a great Tribulation. They have shaped the way that the majority reads this sort of language to the point that most people never ask, “How would the original audience have read and understood the words of Daniel, Yeshua/Jesus, John and others?” In truth, it rarely occurs to anyone to even suppose that there is another way and why would they when there are so many modern voices presenting a form of the book that appeals to our modern tastes for entertainment and Christian Nationalism? I know that, for me, the first books I read after becoming a Christian in 1999 (I mean besides the Bible) were the Left Behind books and they were written by someone whom I thought was knowledgeable. He sounded sure of himself, and that many books sold can’t be wrong. But books like that capitalize on American fears, values, obsessions and appeal to what we find entertaining. It was the MCU of the Christian world for a very long time—and it did a lot of damage.
So, before we dive in to Mark 13, where I think we will be spending like five weeks—next week we will be talking about the actual destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, which followed the wars between 66 and 70 CE, and then after that, we will dive into the rest of what is called the Olivet Discourse, which is the longest speech in the Gospel of Mark—and, interestingly enough—the one part of Mark that scholars believe is the oldest thing ever written down from Yeshua, dating to maybe a decade after His death, burial and resurrection. Many believe it is actually the document referred to by Paul in I Thess 4:15, mentioned by Paul when he is rebuking the Thessalonians for being so obsessed with the second coming. It is so entirely Jewish, and so when filtered through modern fiction writers and the majority who have not studied the apocalypse as an actual literary expression of the ancient world, not imagining that all this was easily understood by ancient people and not understanding that this wasn’t rocket science for them to understand the way it is for us—well, it turns into something it was never meant to be and the ancient context is entirely lost. The fantastic imagery and symbolism gets deciphered in a way that would make modern movie-makers proud. Or not, dang those Left Behind movies were horrifyingly bad. But they are the product of the American imagination—an imagination that largely cannot understand the language of the oppressed and is therefore not in need of a sort of literature where God rips back the veil between Himself and us and allows us to see world events as He sees them. Today, we’re going to do a crash course in beginning to understand this sort of writing and hopefully de-mystify the mystery of it so that we can all interpret it with a lot more sanity.
Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.
All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com.
The word apocalypse is very confusing to non-scholars and, of course, I am not a scholar—I just play one on the radio. The word regrettably dredges up expectations of foretelling, doom and gloom prophecies, and harbingers of death and destruction but that’s actually the opposite of what an apocalypse is about in real life. The word apocalypse comes from the Greek apokalypsis which means an unveiling, uncovering or revelation—specifically the full disclosure of something formerly unknown (Lexham Theological Wordbook). It does not mean the end of the world. And it is not a word that historically means any sort of divine revelation. One can uncover their head and if they were speaking ancient Greek, they would use the same word.
So, when we see the first verse of Revelation and we see that it is the “revelation of Jesus Christ” we are going to be second-hand witnesses to certain things throughout this “revealing” and namely we are going to see the world as Yeshua sees it from His vantage point, seated at the right hand of Yahweh. More specifically, we are going to see the way that the world of Imperial Roman oppression looks not from the human perspective as one living in it and subjected to all the propaganda, but we are going to get the big picture from a heavenly and more accurate frame of reference. In a nutshell, “what does God see when He looks at the situation of the various churches in Asia?” What people see and feel in the midst is often hopelessness or apathy, depending on how comfortable their life is and how well they are able to get along with the oppressors—but an unveiling gives those suffering and collaborating both hope and severe criticism by God showing the former that in the end He will win and they will be rewarded for their faithful witness and the latter that they are in extreme danger of being cast out. When an apocalypse deals with end times events, it is called an eschatological apocalypse. As we have been in the last days since the ministry of Yeshua began, and that is what Yeshua preached—the eschatological Kingdom of Heaven/God had invaded the earth from Heaven, in His person, and He was inaugurating a new creation reality where the promises of Jeremiah 31 would come to pass in those who believed in His message and in His vindication through Resurrection and attached themselves to Him through allegiance. Salvation is about personal allegiance to Yahweh through His chosen Messiah Yeshua, our king.
So, what makes an apocalypse an apocalypse? Well, first of all, an apocalypse is a genre of literature that was popular beginning during the Hellenistic era and is very influenced by both the Persian and the Greeks. By genre, I mean the type of writing—for example, we have histories, biographies, inspiration, science fiction, fantasy, gothic, mysteries, thrillers, fairy tales, myths, etc. When you get into a book, you generally read it through that lens. No one would read an Agatha Christie novel in the same way that they would read something by CS Lewis or JRR Tolkein. And no one would read a CS Lewis apologetic like Mere Christianity in the same way that they would read his fantasy Chronicles of Narnia or his satirical Screwtape Letters. In the same way, the Bible is filled with different sorts of literature—theological histories, temple texts, poetry, encomium, parables, narratives, etc…all the way to apocalypses. We would never read a Psalm through the same lens or filters that we would read the Parables or in the same way that we approach the Genesis 1 Temple text or the Covenant Lawsuit sections. Or at least we shouldn’t. We know that not every part of the Bible is meant to be read the same way and really cannot be. When we even try, we have to butcher the text. Metaphors are great in some places but not so much appropriate in others.
I cannot remember which scholar who made the point that you would never ever read The Hobbit looking for futuristic prophesies because “it’s simply not that kind of book”. That isn’t the purpose of the Hobbit. The Hobbit is fiction, fantasy, enjoyable, much better than the movie version—and there is of course some social commentary but you would never try to take the Hobbit (and I think this was the example they used, in fact, so this isn’t me being particularly clever) and line it up with modern day figures and trying to make it “prophetic” which is another word we have to rescue.
But an actual apocalypse, like Revelation or some parts of Daniel, or fictional works like I Enoch or 4 Baruch and others (because it was a wildly popular way to write about the Bible—think Narnia as being a certain sort of Messianic commentary, as a sort of comparison to why this would be enjoyable and why it would pop up as being actually quoted in the NT along with popular quotes from certain philosophers and playwrights including Euripides, the other Euripides, Meander, Thucydides, etc)—anyway, an actual apocalypse is a genre of writing where there are heavenly beings (angels and often archangels) directing a human being (often a prophet or other named Bible character) through the veil that separates earth from the cosmic heavenly realms so that they can see world realities from a more cosmic point of view and by that, I mean how things function behind the scenes in the realm of God’s forces and Satan’s forces fighting against one another.
For example, in Daniel you have the four beasts that were written to describe the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, and the Greeks. Instead of the beautiful empires that they purported and advertised themselves to be, reigned over by virtuous kings doing righteousness and justice, Daniel is served to a guided tour where he sees these empires as they truly are—beastly abominations devouring everything around them from people, to lands, to resources and all in pursuit of earthly glory while calling themselves saviors. And, in the east, portraying themselves oftentimes as divine. But as part of the tour in a true apocalypse, their time is limited because Yahweh will not allow them to reign and devour forever and they will be crushed—oftentimes using the imagery of coming in a cloud to visit judgment upon them. This will be important for Mark 13.
In Revelation, we see a continuance of what Daniel experienced and we see a beast rising out of the sea who is an exact composite of Daniel’s four beasts—meaning that the Roman Empire’s wickedness outstrips all who went before and combines the offenses before God and against humanity all into one package. In showing this, John sees that Rome is just one more beast—not divine in nature (despite claims to the contrary of both Rome, identified as the goddess Roma, and the Caesars of having that divine status). But again, as in the case of Daniel, they will not endure and the audience of both Daniel and Revelation are assured that their witness and endurance is eternal and not for nothing, unlike all the efforts and oppression of the world empires seeking greatness and immortality through violence. In a nutshell, God wins and through allegiance with Him, you will win as well. To the people living during the times of the Hellenistic and Roman persecutions, this was a much-needed reality check.
Prophecy, another terribly abused word. Prophecy in Scripture means that someone speaks the words of God in some way. It is rarely predictive in nature and usually is delivered to people in crisis—generally a crisis resulting from their own sins. For example, and I love to use this example, Isaiah 1-39 is all the prophet saying, on Yahweh’s behalf, “Clean up your act or else what happened to the Northern Kingdom will happen to you too.” Isaiah 40-55 is the prophet saying on behalf of Yahweh, “Okay, your ancestors didn’t listen but I will rescue you. Stop being afraid of the Babylonians and their gods and put your trust and faith in me and only me.” That’s prophecy. Every once in a while, we get something specifically predictive, but that’s more of the exception than the norm.
Typical prophecy is, “Stop oppressing one another. Give up your idols. I am so sick of you guys going through the motions while neglecting Me and thinking that sacrifice can save you when your hearts aren’t right before Me.” You get the idea. Warning, warning, warning. Sometimes with an or else, or else, or else. Which is, of course, why not all predictive warnings come to pass, or predictive blessings as they aren’t straight up, “This is going to happen” but instead, God relents, or the conditions are not met or whatever. Jonah is all about that. And Jewish commentators often point this out as well. This is the way the Bible is written, as a very open-ended sort of situation. Oh, I know, in a way it is like those “Choose your own story” books. Yahweh warns, what are you going to do? If you choose A, go to page 3 but if you choose B, go to page 200. And that’s a big problem we see when people want to read the Bible as some sort of cut and dried, black and white history where everything is easy, everything in it happens because it is supposed to be inerrant according to a definition of inerrancy that just doesn’t work when we honestly look at the text. We set people up to fall away if they are clever enough to notice and if they aren’t willing to be bullied into accepting the easy answers.
One more word is eschatology before we really get going. Eschatology is a word that simply means “pertaining to the end times/end of days/last days, etc..”. This is another word that can really muddle things up when we make the assumption that the end times are just entirely at some future date. As I mentioned before, Yeshua saw that He was ushering in the last days—and I hate to say it because here is another abused word but a new dispensation or a new reality for humans and for the world where the sons of god were being revealed through being changed on the inside via the agency of the Holy Spirit and the Gospel would be preached to the ends of the earth so that Yahweh would no longer simply just be the God of one people group but instead God over the entire world, worshipped by peoples of all tongues, tribes and nations. And Mark 13 has to be read with all of these things very clearly in mind or we will read into it things that are not there and will ignore what is there.
Going back to apocalyptic language now. There is a difference between an apocalypse and scriptures which use apocalyptic imagery. An apocalypse is a genre, or type, of literature and apocalyptic language is something that can and does pop up in non-apocalyptic books. I actually wrote a blog about this where I explained the difference and I am just going to rehash that here because it makes it a whole lot easier to explain that not everything that appears weird is predictive. God uses this sort of imagery and symbolism to talk to people in dreams and even ordinary non-prophet types like me.
I guess the best way to describe what is and is not an apocalypse is by sharing a few dreams—one of which would qualify as apocalyptic but not as eschatological apocalypse as it was not about the last days and two will not, even though they have many of the same elements. So, first dream, not a fully realized apocalypse but having the same revelatory elements and symbolic language, greatly abbreviated:
I was in church, watching myself up on stage being sexually violated by the Pastor. He looked like a monster. People were watching and throwing money at him, financially supporting his actions. (2004)
Okay, no angels in this dream but it was revelatory during a time when I felt completely rejected and abandoned by my church family after the Pastor launched a smear campaign against me, lying about the contents of a letter I had written him privately. As I mentioned, there was no angel saying anything like, “Look at this…” and there was no call for me to endure and be faithful. This was simply a dream showing me what the situation looked like from God’s point of view—with the Pastor was violating me and by continuing to pay him while knowing what was going on, the congregation as complicit. This is very simple, nothing complicated, but you needed the context of my life to understand the trial I was enduring at the time. Without the context, the dream could mean a lot of other things. It helped me to endure the abuse that God had previously told me to bear quietly. This served to show me that although it seemed like the pastor was getting away with it and maybe God was playing favorites, that nothing was further from the truth. So, although we have the over-the-top imagery of an apocalypse, it also lacks many elements you would find in an actual apocalypse. Let’s fast forward to a more recent dream during the days of social media:
I saw people slaughtering and butchering others and turning their bodies into paint. But the paint had no color, it was beige. It was lifeless. How could so much blood and violence not be obvious in the final product? (2021)
Again, no angelic figures but the symbolism is again monstrous and horrifying. That’s how symbolic language works. Are people actually doing this? No, but this is how God sees the slander going on on social media walls (which is where paint goes, right?). People are butchering one another and plastering it all over their walls and it looks absolutely normal (beige) to us and even boring when it should be horrifying. Now, without the social media context, someone might mistakenly interpret this dream in such a way as to believe that people are actually committing murder and turning the bodies (it wasn’t just the blood) into paint and we will end up with a desperately lurid conspiracy theory on our hands. But this is how God communicates in dreams. The imagery is always more severe than what we see on the surface in real life. So, this is a wake-up call to see what internet slander looks like from God’s point of view—all the gossip about other people and generally posing as something far more righteous.
This next one actually qualifies as an apocalypse, albeit a personal one and not for the world or the end times and therefore not an eschatological apocalypse. And again, without the personal context of a specific event in my life, it is meaningless. To make it easier, we were living out in the country at the time.
I was standing on my porch, with Mark, and a farmer driving an old truck was barreling onto my property, almost hit my above-ground septic tank and as he turned toward the chicken coop, I realized that he was “driving like a damned fool.” The back of his truck, I noticed, was full of dilapidated chicken coops and he dumped them unceremoniously on my property. It was then I noticed that Mark was carrying me in his arms but then I realized it was not Mark but the Lord! The farmer sped off, never even bothering to acknowledge my presence. We went over to the chicken coops, looking for anything of value but all we found was chicken…um…poop. Lots of it…I found myself on the farmer’s property and there were a lot of tourists and spectators there. Farm animals but trapped in cages. The ground wasn’t solid, but deep mud and probably manure. I saw a man and I realized he was an angel and so I asked him, “What must I do?” He told me that if I engaged the farmer that I would have to do it on his own turf and I would come out filthy but if I refrained then I would come out clean. Suddenly, I was in a house, impeccably clean and gleaming white on the inside, and in every room there were spotless white bathrooms. There were maybe five of these bathrooms—no matter where I went in the house, there was a place where I could get cleaned up and stay clean. (December 2015)
So, in this one, although it does not concern eschatological concerns (last days) it had the other trappings of an apocalypse. It had a personal encouraging encounter with Yeshua/Jesus. It had an angel giving me guidance. It had a warning of what would happen if I was not faithful to the commandment I had been given as to how to handle the situation (that I was still ignorant of in real life) and encouragement as to specific promises of what would happen if I did obey. A situation that had not happened yet (well, it had but I would be unaware for a few more hours) was being portrayed in a revelatory way where I could see how God viewed it. It functioned to let me know that I was not alone and the situation was not going unnoticed. We all need this from time to time, right?
As in any apocalypse, the oppressed have an ally in God, and the oppressors are shown to be condemned, foolish, and able to deliver nothing but chicken poop—no matter how much of a crowd they draw or how popular they are. The fact that chicken poop, in coarser language, is also a euphemism for cowardice, there’s that too. God loves a good pun and the Bible has more than one instance of a very coarse pun or rebuke (Ez 23:20, anyone?).
In context, someone had uploaded an attack video against me where they described me and my research to a “T” so that it couldn’t be anyone else, without naming me (that might be the cowardice part) and lied about my intentions in doing the research and just engaged in ruthless character assassination against me (again, delivering the chicken poop to my property). Now, without that dream, I would have retaliated and would have felt right to do so. Just being honest. And God knew it. So, like Daniel and Revelation and other apocalyptic literature, I was given God’s view of what was going on and encouragement to endure quietly with the warning that if I did not, I would come out the worse for it and if I did then I would come out squeaky clean—regardless of any short-term damage (and there was some) and inconvenience. Plus, it hurt like the dickens and was humiliating because he had a huge following and I was barely getting started in ministry. So, this would be very much like the individual letters to the Asian churches portion of Revelation, distinct instructions/warning for me.
So, when we come to Revelation, which is a full eschatological apocalypse because it goes from the immediate situation of the congregations of Asia Minor dealing with various challenges in being either persecuted by or allying themselves with Rome (and both of those are problems, they just require different responses) to future victory, we have the same things. But without context, they can easily be misinterpreted to be literal—like the locusts and the horsemen and the beasts. But how would these images have translated to the original audience that we see the letters specifically addressed to? If we don’t study the original context, we are going to go wild with a bunch of kooky interpretations that need to be revamped on a regular basis. And that’s just bad eisegesis. Fortunately, we know enough now that we can discern, in the words of one of my favorite scholars, David deSilva, that even a low-level Roman official with mediocre intelligence could have read Revelation and understood the attacks against Rome herself and, specifically, Nero.
Taking an apocalypse too literally is to miss the point. And so is taking it out of the immediate historical reality. After all, no one drove their truck onto my property, and they didn’t actually dump a bunch of old chicken coops. I am sure the ground at their place is not literally ankle deep in mud and muck. I am sure they don’t have farm animals on display in cages. And no, I have never been on his property, nor have I even been in a house that clean with so many bathrooms. The important thing was the message, the clarification, the warning and the promise and what it meant to my walk. It was a pseudo-apocalypse for me and my promised endgame of coming out of it clean, which, even if you were one of the people watching and spreading that video around, you must know by now that I came out of the entire situation clean and unscathed and even vindicated in that research he wanted to destroy me over. The guy who did it? Not so much.
In the same way, Revelation is a message to churches in the midst of trial and temptation that no matter how things look to them on the ground now, God sees the situation differently and is calling them to endure with faithfulness and integrity and a spotless witness. And a further promise that in the future there will be vindication and victory, even if they are not alive to see it.
Can we glean and benefit from Revelation? Absolutely. Can anyone glean from the dreams I had if they are going through something similar? Absolutely. But only when not deprived of the original situational context. Otherwise, we’re going to end up with a story of nuclear weapons and Apache attack helicopters and miss the point of the apocalypse entirely. God wins. He sees the injustice. Be faithful. Endure to the end.
So, I want to quickly address some of the apocalyptic symbolism of Mark 13, which obviously isn’t an angelic guided tour of what their situation looked like from behind the veil but was specifically predictive in nature and was all fulfilled with the exception of the Parousia, which we will also be talking about because, again, another desperately misunderstood concept in modern times but which was a big “no duh” for the first-century Roman audience of the Gospel of Mark or, for that matter, the Jewish audience of Matthew.
I was just studying this this morning, actually and the whole “coming in the clouds” thing which speaks of a visitation of judgment which, or course, can be good or bad. We aren’t literally talking about real clouds–this is apocalyptic symbolism for a cosmic event (something that happens on the divine side of things that we can only see the results of). Let’s look at Isaiah 19:1 “A prophecy against Egypt: See, the Lord rides on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt. The idols of Egypt tremble before him, and the hearts of the Egyptians melt with fear.´ The coming in the clouds here is specifically associated with a visitation that brought civil war upon Egypt, later in Nahum 1:3, we see another visitation mentioning clouds against Ninevah: “The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.” Obviously, this is not literal. There are other examples but we can also tie it into a much abused bundle of verses from I Thess 4:15-17
For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord (scholars believe this to be an early written account of what is now Mark 13), that we who are alive, who are left until the coming (Parousia) of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
This sounds like a literal account but it has apocalyptic language that has to be taken into account. First, we have a visitation in the clouds, that means it is a time of judgment which, for the saints, is a good thing and for the oppressors of the world, not so much. But we also need to talk about that word Parousia—which will also factor into understanding Mark 13. That word describes the physical coming of a king or general back to a city after a victorious campaign. The residents of the city would go out to meet him and treat him with full honors before bringing him back into the city with cheering and songs and celebration. They would not come out of the city for the purpose of going anywhere else with him. This is actually what should have happened with the triumphal entry—that was to be a Parousia and instead became a full-blown snubbing by the very kind of leadership that was actually falling over themselves to greet Alexander the Great at his Parousia in 331 BCE. So, whenever we try to make this word mean something it never meant, we do get into trouble. The word Parousia clearly means one thing and one thing only—the King has returned victorious and will be escorted into the city, where he will remain with his people. In this case, either the entire world or New Jerusalem, however you want to look at it.
Apocalyptic language is often over the top extra, or dramatic, and will speak in terms of universal ie. worldwide catastrophe instead of something local and we have a ton of examples of that from the Hebrew Scriptures. There’s a problem when we take these references literally—like in Mark 13:19-20, which is often mistaken for being signs of a latter days tribulation instead of looking at the context, which is clearly about the destruction of the Temple and their need to flee Judea before things get too hairy with the Romans (after all, that is the question that the disciples asked in direct reference to Yeshua’s declaration that the Temple would be utterly destroyed in the first two verses of the chapter).
For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be. And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days.
And I don’t want anyone to be upset with me because I know this is taught in parallel with Revelation but we have to take it out of context to do so. For the first century Jews, the Temple was their world, the center of their faith and religious practices and very much something they identified with. Think of 911 and how Americans felt when the Twin Towers went down. Now, until that day like maybe a fraction or a fraction of 1% of Americans even cared so you can take how we all felt and multiply it by like a million. For them, it was more tribulation than they had ever possibly imagined. And outside of this context, it sounds like this is worldwide but that doesn’t make sense as part of the Olivet discourse, which is entirely about the condemnation of the leadership and what the Temple had become. So, we have “such tribulation” and that is hyperbole because it had no effect on people elsewhere unless they were Jews. But for them, this was like the end of the world. And the claim that “no human being would be saved” if the days were not cut short. Again, and we will get to this next week and over the coming five weeks when we talk about the Romain siege and the wars and rumors of wars and the flight from Judea and the abomination who caused desolation, what happened to those who fled to the Jordan instead of to the mountains, the cannibalism within the city due to famine, and all the false prophets and false Messiahs of those times who convinced the Judeans to flee into the Temple amidst assurances that Yahweh was about to destroy the Roman armies. When we look at the history as recorded by Josephus, Eusebius, Tacitus, Dio Chrysostom and others, this is clearly talking about what will occur in forty years. And the Gospel of Mark was written before it happened.
So, anyway, Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21. Apocalyptic language and symbolism. Hyperbole, which is a literary form of exaggeration designed to capture the attention of the audience—and it totally works. Local events being portrayed as universal—which we see throughout the Hebrew scriptures and is most obvious in the Flood story and explains why only 1% of cultures worldwide have flood myths and not more like 90%. This is a way of telling stories from a more cosmic vantage point, where everything is more dramatic and earthshattering. Really, the whole goal is to capture the tragedy of one people group more accurately. When the Temple was destroyed, for the Jews, we cannot underestimate that it must have seemed like their world utterly ended. With the death and destruction and enslavement and scattering and all that goes with it, there was nothing “local” about it to them. The same with us when something horrible happens—it doesn’t matter what the rest of the world is dealing with because all we can see it the end of the world as we knew it.
