Let the Reader Understand

Gary answers a listener question about the parenthetical statement in the Gospels about “letting the reader understand.”

Earlier in Israel’s history, God threatened desolation because the Jews had defiled the temple with detestable things and abominations. “‘So as I live,’ declares the Lord God, ‘surely, because you have defiled My sanctuary with all your detestable idols and with all your abominations, therefore I will also withdraw, and My eye shall have no pity and I will not spare’” (Ezek. 5:11). The first temple was destroyed because of what Israel’s priests did there.

The Jews of Jesus’ day had turned the temple into a “house of merchandise” (John 2:16) and a “robbers’ den” (Matt. 21:13). Jesus, as the High Priest “who has passed through the heavens” (Heb. 4:14), inspected the temple twice, found it leprous (unclean), and issued His priestly evaluation: “Jesus came out from the temple” (Matt. 24:1), as the priest “shall come out from the house” (Lev. 14:38), and declared it “desolate” (Matt. 23:38), as the priest declared a leprous house to be “unclean” (Lev. 14:44). A leprous house could be cleansed in only one way: “He shall therefore tear down the house, its stones, and its timbers, and all the plaster of the house, and he shall take them outside the city to an unclean place” (Lev. 14:45). When Jesus’ disciples pointed to the temple buildings after hearing of its promised desolation, Jesus answered, “Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here shall be left upon another, which will not be torn down” (Matt. 24:2).

The religious leaders rejected Jesus as the Messiah (Matt. 26:57-68). Instead of choosing Jesus, they “persuaded the multitudes to ask for Barabbas and to put Jesus to death” (27:20). With the true Lamb slain, the earthly temple could no longer operate as a place of true sacrifice. The action of the high priest, “standing in the holy place” (24:15), continuing to offer sacrifices in the temple, was an abomination, a rejection of the work of Christ.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

A first-century interpretation of the Olivet Discourse was once common in commentaries and narrative-style books that describe the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. There is also a history of skeptics who turn to Bible prophecy and claim Jesus was wrong about the timing of His coming at “the end of the age” and the signs associated with it. A mountain of scholarship shows that the prophecy given by Jesus was fulfilled in exacting detail when He said it would: before the generation of those to whom He was speaking passed away.

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Gary answers a listener question about the parenthetical statement in the Gospels about “letting the reader understand.” Other similar instances are also found in other areas of the NT. Were these something that was said originally, or were they added by the author as a clue to how to interpret the context?

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