Olivet Discourse

But in the days following the glorious reception, they witnessed constant conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders and heard His severe condemnation of the Pharisees, culminating in the depressing prediction of Jerusalem’s destruction. The destruction of the holy city and temple was not compatible with their expectations ð hopes not built upon listening to what Jesus had been teaching, but upon selfish, human-centered aspirations. . . .
The disciples may have had been influenced by the humanistic thinking of the Jewish religious leaders who expected a military commander like Judas Maccabee or Simon bar Kokhba to come and free Israel from Roman occupation. God’s program of rejection, torture, and death for the Messiah did not fit the earth-bound religious conviction of the self-righteous Jewish leaders or even of His most intimate followers. The tension raised by Jesus’ confrontations with the scribes and Pharisees and then His declaration of the judgement of Jerusalem was disturbing and disheartening for the disciples. Their hopes of immediate glory and authority which they assumed would soon be brought about through Christ establishing His kingdom were suddenly wiped out.
Jesus had already been confronted by this type of negative response from His followers. In Matthew 16: 22, Peter, being shocked by Jesus’ prediction that He was going to Jerusalem where He would “suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed” (16:21), took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. Peter’s emotional and misguided perspective led him to falsely predict, “This shall never happen to you.” Christ’s rebuke of Peter serves as an important lesson for all of His followers, “you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” Christ was focused totally upon the mission that His Father had appointed for Him. His perspective was on the ultimate purpose of God which required His own suffering and death. Like the original disciples, followers of Christ today too often focus on their own hopes and aspirations rather than on God’s ultimate objective. To their credit, the disciples did not abandon their Lord, but sought clarification, “Tell us” (Mt. 24:3).
24:2b “Certainly, I say to you, in no way shall a stone here be left upon a stone which will not be torn down.” Jesus’ emphatic exclamation, “truly” (ajmhVn / a-mēn) , here translated as “certainly,” stresses the importance and the truthfulness of what is said. It was equivalent to “pay attention because this is important.” Also, emphatic is the statement “in no way.” Jesus used a double negative (ouj mhV / ou mē) to express an absolute truth that the temple will be disassembled stone by stone. Though Christ’s prophecy presented an inconceivable reality to the Jews and even His close followers, it was fulfilled in less than 40 years. In A.D. 70, the Roman general Titus conquered Jerusalem, and during the fighting within the city, the temple was burned and eventually torn down. Both Roman and Jewish historical records verify this tragic event. Josephus, a Jewish historian and witness to this tragic event, records,
Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple . . . it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundations, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited.
Even as Jesus had predicted, the city and temple were destroyed. In the modern era, many thousands of tourists have visited the old city and seen the massive wall that surrounds the ancient town. Some may assume Jesus was mistaken, but in truth, the walls had been rebuilt and redestroyed on several occasions after A.D. 70. In A.D. 1099, Christian crusaders tore down the walls existing at that time and did not rebuild them but left Jerusalem as an “open city.” However, the current walls were built in the 16th century by Ottoman Turks during the reign of Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent. Only the lowest level of stones upon which the current wall was re-constructed are actually true Herodian stones from the first century. These re-built walls help modern people conceive of how walled cities appeared and how they functioned, but they are not the walls of Jesus’ time.
To the disciples, the massive stones may have appeared to be a paragon of indestructability, but soon they would prove to be a paradigm of the fragility and temporary nature of all things earthly. Christ predicted what humans could not envision. Even so, modern Christians read of prophetic events that appear impossible, but we must learn to “see” the spiritual reality behind the material presence and look beyond human rationalism and experience.