The Beginning of Sorrows, Not the End of the World Text: Mark 13:3-8
Introduction: Reading the Signs Rightly
We live in an age of breathless eschatological excitement. For many evangelicals, the daily news is little more than a decoder ring for the book of Revelation. Every earthquake, every conflict in the Middle East, every political tremor is seen as a sure sign that the end is just around the corner. But this kind of newspaper exegesis, this frantic sign-seeking, is not a mark of spiritual maturity. More often than not, it is a profound misreading of what the Lord Jesus is actually teaching us in passages like this one.
The Olivet Discourse, recorded here in Mark 13 and in parallel accounts in Matthew 24 and Luke 21, is one of the most misunderstood portions of Scripture. It has been twisted to support all manner of speculative timelines, rapture charts, and prophetic date-setting. But Jesus is not giving his disciples a crystal ball to predict the twenty-first century. He is giving them a survival guide for the first century. He is answering a very specific question about a very specific, localized, historical event: the utter destruction of the Jerusalem temple that would occur within their own generation.
Just before our text, the disciples were marveling at the magnificent stones of the temple. Jesus responds with a shocking prophecy: not one of those stones would be left upon another. This is what prompts their question. They come to Him privately, on the Mount of Olives, looking directly across at the temple, and ask, "When will these things be, and what will be the sign?" They are asking about the end of their world, the end of the entire Old Covenant system, which was embodied in that temple. And Jesus answers them directly.
What follows is not a list of signs of the Second Coming. It is precisely the opposite. Jesus gives them a list of non-signs. He tells them about a series of catastrophic events that will happen, but which they are not to interpret as the final end. These are the "beginning of birth pains," not the final delivery. To misread this is to fall into the very panic and deception that Jesus is warning them against. We must read this passage with first-century eyes, understanding that it was fulfilled, and fulfilled in terrifying detail, in the events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70.
The Text
And as He was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew were questioning Him privately, "Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?" And Jesus began to say to them, “See to it that no one deceives you. Many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am He!’ and will mislead many. And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; those things must take place; but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will also be famines. These things are merely the beginning of birth pains.
(Mark 13:3-8 LSB)
The Disciples' Question (v. 3-4)
The setting is crucial. Jesus and His inner circle are looking at the temple, the epicenter of Jewish life and worship for a thousand years.
"And as He was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew were questioning Him privately, 'Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?'" (Mark 13:3-4)
Their question has two parts: "When?" and "What is the sign?" They want to know the timing and the signal for the cataclysm Jesus just predicted. In their minds, the destruction of the temple was an event of such magnitude that it must be synonymous with the end of the age and the final judgment. They were conflating the end of the Old Covenant era with the end of the world itself. Much of the confusion in modern eschatology comes from making this same mistake.
Jesus will spend the rest of this discourse carefully untangling those two things. He will answer their question about the temple's destruction, which He says will happen within "this generation" (Mark 13:30). But He will also speak of His final, personal, bodily return, the timing of which "no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone" (Mark 13:32). Our task is to see which part of His answer applies to which event. The context makes it plain that verses 5 through 31 are dealing with the events of the first century.
The First Non-Sign: Deception (v. 5-6)
Jesus' very first response is a warning against being led astray.
"And Jesus began to say to them, 'See to it that no one deceives you. Many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am He!’ and will mislead many.'" (Mark 13:5-6 LSB)
The primary danger in times of upheaval is not physical, but spiritual. It is the danger of deception. When the foundations are shaken, people become desperate for answers, for saviors, for messiahs. Jesus predicts that the turmoil leading up to A.D. 70 would be a fertile breeding ground for false Christs.
And this is precisely what happened. The Jewish historian Josephus, who was an eyewitness to these events, documents numerous messianic pretenders who rose up in Judea during this period. Men like Theudas, or the "Egyptian" mentioned in Acts 21, or Simon bar Giora, who led factions during the siege of Jerusalem. These charlatans promised deliverance from Rome and led many astray to their destruction. They came in Jesus' name, not by explicitly calling themselves "Jesus," but by claiming His office. They claimed to be the Messiah, the Anointed One, who had come to save Israel. Jesus says, "Don't fall for it. I am the true Messiah, and my kingdom is not of this world in the way you are thinking." This warning was intensely practical for the first-century church.
The Second Non-Sign: Upheaval (v. 7-8a)
Next, Jesus warns them not to be panicked by political and natural disasters.
"And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; those things must take place; but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will also be famines." (Mark 13:7-8a LSB)
This is the verse that modern prophecy gurus love to point to. They see a war on the news, hear of an earthquake, and immediately declare that the end is nigh. But they are doing the exact opposite of what Jesus commands. He says, "When you see these things, do not be alarmed... that is not yet the end." These are not signs of the end; they are the common, tragic backdrop of human history in a fallen world. They are the sort of things that must happen.
The period between Christ's ascension and the destruction of Jerusalem was particularly fraught with such turmoil. The Roman historian Tacitus speaks of the era as being "rich in disasters." There were wars on the frontiers of the empire, civil strife in Rome itself, and intense conflict between Jews and Gentiles throughout the region. Josephus records famines, like the one mentioned in Acts 11, and there were notable earthquakes in Asia Minor and Crete. Jesus is telling His disciples that these terrible events are part of the process, but they are not the final signal. The end He is speaking of here, the end of Jerusalem, is not yet.
The Meaning of the Signs: Birth Pains (v. 8b)
Jesus concludes this section by giving them the interpretive key for all these calamities.
"These things are merely the beginning of birth pains." (Mark 13:8b LSB)
This metaphor is brilliant and essential. What are birth pains? First, they are painful. They involve groaning and travail. The world is groaning under the curse of sin (Romans 8:22), and these wars, famines, and earthquakes are acute symptoms of that curse. Second, birth pains are preliminary. They are not the baby. They signal that the birth is coming, but they are not the event itself. These tribulations were signaling the impending birth of a new age, the age of the New Covenant in its fullness, which would arrive with the definitive destruction of the Old Covenant system centered in the temple.
Third, birth pains increase in frequency and intensity as the time draws near. As the disciples watched history unfold over the next four decades, they would have seen these very things escalate, just as Jesus predicted. The conflicts, the famines, the social breakdown, all grew more intense as the judgment on apostate Israel approached.
The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 was a judgment of God on a covenant-breaking nation. It was the "great tribulation" for that generation. But it was also a birthing event. It was the final, bloody cutting of the umbilical cord that tied the Christian church to the forms and structures of Old Covenant Israel. Out of the ashes of that temple, the church would emerge as the true temple of God, a global, Gentile-including reality. The pains were terrible, but the birth was glorious.
Conclusion: Don't Be Alarmed, Be Faithful
So what is the takeaway for us? If this passage was primarily fulfilled in the first century, does it have anything to say to us today? Absolutely. The pattern holds true.
First, we must reject the sensationalism and panic that characterizes so much of modern prophecy teaching. Jesus' command is "do not be alarmed." The Lord is on His throne. History is unfolding according to His sovereign plan. Our job is not to be frantic sky-watchers, but faithful kingdom-builders. The world will always be full of wars, rumors of wars, and natural disasters. These things are the tragic static of a fallen world, but they are not a signal for us to abandon our posts.
Second, we must recognize that deception is still the primary danger. False teachers and false gospels are always with us. The only antidote is to be so thoroughly saturated in the true Word of God that the counterfeit is immediately obvious. We must be discerning, sober-minded, and grounded in the Scriptures.
Finally, we must see that God is always working through a pattern of death and resurrection, of judgment and new life. The death of the Old Covenant system was the birth of the New Covenant age. In the same way, the tribulations and trials we face, both personally and corporately, are used by God as "birth pains." He is putting to death the old man and bringing to birth the new. He is judging the rebellious kingdoms of this world in order to advance the kingdom of His Son.
The world is in labor. It groans, awaiting the final manifestation of the sons of God. But we know that the baby is coming. The Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ will one day fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. Therefore, do not be alarmed. Be about your Father's business. For these things must take place, but the end of the story is victory.