Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Are Your Ready for the Apocalypse? | Mark | Mark 13

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. If this podcast has been helping you in your walk with God, would you take five seconds to help us? Hop onto Twitter and follow our new Twitter account at TMBT Podcast. If you go there, you can see our latest episodes. You can also follow Keith and I and send us messages. We'd love to follow you back and see what's happening in your life.

Starting point is 00:00:34 life. Right now we are asking, who is Jesus? Today, we are doing something way different than what we normally do on this podcast. We are going to talk about the end of the world. Or are we? So this week, we are going to have two 10-minute episodes on Mark 13. These will be our usual kind of devotional episodes. The first one, which is today's episode, is actually just going to set us up for the second one, episode 233. And in that episode, we will, actually read through the passage that we're discussing today, Mark 13, and we'll give it some fun commentary. But today, we need to start by understanding what it is we're reading when we read Mark 13, which is, again, to many people, about the end of the world. Or is it? Good question. Okay,

Starting point is 00:01:21 so to help get us set up for this interesting passage, I need to tell you about my first day in Israel. After about a 12-hour flight from the States over the Atlantic in Europe, we finally land in Tel Aviv, Israel. And so, like everybody on the flight, I am jet lagged, sore, and ready to sleep in a bed. Of course, the jet lag meant that the whole sleep thing didn't go so well. And so the next morning, I took a trip to the Starbucks of Israel, aroma, which is really just the English word aroma. I think it's kind of funny. Anyways, let's go. Thankfully, the cashier there spoke English. And so I ordered a black coffee. That's my favorite kind of coffee. No frou-frou, no sugar, no cream, none of that kind of stuff. So I pay for my drink and I wait for it.

Starting point is 00:02:03 When I get the drink, I sit down, excited for it, I take a sip, and it's absolutely terrible. It's definitely not coffee, so I open up the lid and I discover a frothy, milky, light brown substance inside. It was a cappuccino. I returned to the counter. I explained that I'd ordered the coffee and asked for a new one. They were incredibly polite and quickly gave me the right drink. Only when I sat down it wasn't the right drink, I opened it up again to discover yet again another cappuccino. Now at this point, I'm way too embarrassed to attempt a third round, so I just

Starting point is 00:02:39 waited and asked my tour guide what the deal was. When I told him the story, he laughs at me in a nice way, and he says in his thick Israeli accent. He says, there's no coffee in Israel. In Israel, there's only espresso. If you look for the wrong thing, you're going to get the wrong thing. If you look for the right thing, which is espresso, then you'll get the best espresso in the world. I took his advice. At first I thought the espresso was a bit strong, but over time, I have to admit, their espresso was great. One of the problems modern people face when we read an ancient book like the Bible is that we come to it asking our questions. We're looking for the things that we want out of it. We are asking for coffee in Israel, when there is no coffee in Israel. And when we look for the wrong thing, we end up getting the wrong thing. We ask for coffee, we get cappuccino.

Starting point is 00:03:28 But if we ask the questions that the Bible itself invites us to ask, and we looked for the things that it wants us to look for, then we might find something different. Now, that different thing, it might be strong. It might take a little bit to get used to, but in the end, it is great. This is very much so the case whenever we come to a passage like Mark 13, which, again, many people think is about the end of the world. This is why it's been called Jesus's Little Apocalypse. Kind of a fun name. I wish I could write a Little Apocalypse. Now, if Hollywood is any rubric, we are fascinated by asking the question, how will the world end? And when we come to passages like Mark 13, we find many elements that we associate with the modern

Starting point is 00:04:09 genre of post-apocalyptic thriller. These exist in both film and literature. In these movies and books, there are worldwide wars, enormous natural disasters, death, sometimes supernatural destruction, and usually the near-annihilation of the human race. Because of that, when we read Jesus' little Apocalypse, we assume that Jesus is answering our questions today. We are asking the question, how does it all end? But that's not the question that Jesus was asking, nor is it the question that Jesus was trying to answer. When we read Mark 13 and think that it's answering the question, how does it all end? It's kind of like asking for coffee in Israel. Because even though how does the world end might be what we want, it's not what Jesus had to offer. If we read this passage as though it's

Starting point is 00:04:57 answering the question, how does the world end, we are going to end up getting a bizarre, foamy milk drink called Left Behind. We will end up missing out on the espresso that Jesus really wants us to try. Are you ready to try some espresso? Great. These are six things that will help you appreciate the espresso of Mark 13 in our next episode. So, number one, ancient apocalypses, like Jesus is, were not always about the future. Our contemporary genre, post-apocalyptic thriller, focuses exclusively on the future. So when we read the future tense predictions of Jesus, we simply assume that he is also talking about our future as well. The truth is that the ancient genre of apocalypse could speak about the past, the present, the near future, or the distant future.

Starting point is 00:05:42 And it did all of those by speaking in the future tense. In other words, the genre of apocalypse is rarely about foretelling far-distant future events. There just aren't many examples of apocalypses that did that. Let's move on to number two. Apocalypse's were not about the end of the world. Everything from TV shows like The Walking Dead to kids' movies like Wally, imagine futures where human life is whittled down to near extinction or the earth is entirely destroyed. You might assume that the Bible predicts the entire annihilation of the earth, but there's no biblical text that actually says anything like that. Apocalypse is, at least to the Jewish mind, we're not about the end of the world. We don't really have any apocalypses that speak about the end of the world. Okay, number three,

Starting point is 00:06:26 Apocalypsees are designed to unveil hidden reality. Our English word apocalypse actually comes from the Greek word apocalyptic, which simply means to reveal or unveil. So for example, some apocalyptic texts retold past events in order to unveil what was happening in the spiritual realm behind geopolitical events in the present. Similarly, when apocalyptic events, text spoke about near-future realities, so things that might happen in 50 or 100 years, they talk about those future realities in order to unveil what's going to happen in the future. For example, in Jesus' apocalypse, he tells his disciples that they will be persecuted for his name, but then he unveils what is really happening by revealing to them that their suffering

Starting point is 00:07:13 is part of God's bigger plan to proclaim the good news to people from every nation. What looks to the world like the defeat of the disciples is unveiled Apocalypse. It's unveiled by Jesus as their ultimate victory. That's the purpose of Apocalypse. It's not about predictions so much as interpreting the meaning of what's going to happen either right now in the present or in the near future. Number four, Apocalypse's are non-literal. When you hear a radio commentator say, that politician won by a landslide, what do you think? Do you think in your head, oh my gosh, a landslide must have literally happened? preventing all of that politician's opponents from voting for his opponents. The landslide literally caused that politician to win. Well, of course, you don't think that. You understand that it's a figure of speech. But let's say that there was someone in the far future, some alien nation who comes, and they read our newspapers from today. And they translate that phrase, won by a landslide, into their own language. And in their language, they don't have any idioms about people winning by landslides. Well, they might actually be very confused. They might even

Starting point is 00:08:18 even think that a landslide literally determined the election. The Apocalypse in the New Testament all draw on the rich symbolism and imagery of Israel's ancient scriptures, which makes them hard for us to understand today, unless we're deeply familiar with those texts. So for example, when Jesus says the sun will be darkened, stars will fall. Old Testament lovers will recall that in Isaiah 5 and 13, these images were used to describe not the end of the world, but the fall of Babylon. In that small example, they would understand that Jesus is not talking about the literal darkening of the sun or the literal falling of stars, that he's using imagery from the past to talk about the fall of a great nation, which is, of course, what Jesus is trying to do now. He's talking about

Starting point is 00:09:01 the fall of Jerusalem in the present. Okay, number five, apocalypses are ethical. By ethical, I mean that most apocalypses actually have a moral purpose. The speaker unveils what's happening in the present or the near future to show us how to live uprightly. today. You will notice that Jesus transitions twice out of his apocalypse into straightforward moral teaching. He tells his followers that in light of what he's unveiled, they can trust God in the midst of persecution, and that they must remain awake and vigilant against the temptations of the world. So now you are prepped to read Mark 13 with me in our next episode. Go read it on your own before then and try to apply what we've learned. Apocalypse's are rarely about the far-distant future.

Starting point is 00:09:50 They're not really about the end of the world. Apocalypsees are designed to unveil the reality, behind reality, what God is doing in the spiritual realm. Apocalypse is are non-literal, and they are always ethical. They're trying to teach us moral lessons. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Are Your Ready for the Apocalypse? | Mark | Mark 13

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