Marginal Christianity

When he predicts the Temple’s destruction the disciples want to know when. This launches a famous and, in my view, widely misunderstood, discourse on this (Mk.13). Many think the disciples want to know and Jesus instructs them on what will happen at the end of history, the end of the space-time universe. This mistaken, I believe, and radically so. He is speaking about “the end of the world” to be sure. He tells them -they must not be misled by false teachers and leaders (13:5-8), -they must be prepared for persecution and betrayal and to persevere to the end (13:9-13), -they must flee to the hills when they see the “desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be” (13:14-23), and -wait for the return of the Son of Man accompanied by all manner of astral upheaval. Thanks to the kind of theology that inspired the Left Behind franchise, called Dispensationalism, many believe Jesus is describing events at the very end of human history. Without debating the parti...

As a follow up to my suggestions about Jesus’ “End of the World” discourse in Matthew 24, I offer today a reflection by New Testament Professor Tim Gombis on Mark’s version of this teaching by Jesus.   Enjoy! Living Between the End and the End: A Homily By timgombis (http://timgombis.com/) *Originally given at Midtown Christian Community, October 9, 2010. I’ve always been deathly afraid of passages like Mark 13.  I grew up in an evangelical culture that would read passages like Mark 13 as wild and woolly predictions of end-times cataclysms, assigning biblical significance to contemporary events.  Back in the 1980’s, the big fear was the Soviet Union and of course we all knew that America enjoyed Most Favored Nation status with God, so in some way biblical prophecies of gloom and doom were involved in current international relations.  “This passage right here in Revelation has to do with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; and this one in Matthew probably re...