Wars and Rumors of War
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LIKE A WOMAN IN LABOR
As Jesus and His disciples left the temple mount Tuesday afternoon, memories of what just occurred were still ricocheting in their minds. Early that morning, Jesus had cursed a fig tree as a dramatic parabolic display of what would soon happen to Jerusalem. Then, after a brief encounter with the Pharisees where they challenged His authority in the temple, Jesus delivered three scathing parables describing, with increasing clarity, the covenantal catastrophe that will soon befall Old Testament Judah.
The Jews, while listening to their national epitaph, received His parables with about as much grace as a decapitated rattlesnake, still opening and closing its mouth, able and willing at a moment to strike. It was at this point Jesus challenged their authority, humiliating them in front of all of Jerusalem. First, by answering their trap-like questions. Second, by posing questions they could not answer. And third, by declaring 7 Deuteronomic woes upon the city, that would soon feel the full weight of God’s awesome wrath for their crimes against the covenant.
As the disciples were walking away from the city and the temple they adored, they must have been hoping they misunderstood Jesus’ words about the temple. But after pointing to the temple complex looming over them, they were struck with the piercing finality of His linguistic precision and clarity. The temple before them would be destroyed. Brick by brick would be torn apart. The city would be burned. And God’s redemption of sinful humanity would transition away from priests, temples, sacrifices, and feasts of Israel to a new and final era centered on Jesus Christ, our only hope for salvation.
With such seismic shifts about to break upon the landscape of redemption, is it any wonder the disciples wanted to know three specific things from their master and Lord? They wanted to know, 1) When the temple would be destroyed? 2) What signs would occur showing them its destruction was drawing near? And 3) Would its destruction signal the end of the Jewish age?
Last week, we saw Jesus tackling their second question first, giving them a few signs that the end of Jerusalem was coming. Jesus told them it would be like a woman whose labor pains increase with intensity as the delivery draws near (Matthew 24:8). So, in the same way, the signs Jesus gave them would increase in intensity until the city was destroyed. Last week, we saw the first sign Jesus gave, which was the rise of increasingly volatile false messiahs who would lead the nation into greater and greater ruin and disaster climaxing in their delivery over to Rome. Today, we will see the second sign, which is the dawn of iterative wars and rumors of future wars. But first, let us briefly remind ourselves about signs.
REMINDER ABOUT SIGNS
The disciples are asking Jesus a question and expecting a meaningful response. They are looking for things that they will be able to see with their own two eyes and understand with the minds God has given them. They want to know things that they can be on the lookout for and not information about the end of the world.
I mention this as a cautionary reminder. Because as we read the text, our orientation must not be that Jesus is speaking directly to us, although, I do grant that the text speaks to us and teaches us by the Holy Spirit. But in this case, we must remember that this is a conversation among first-century disciples and their Lord. Jesus is speaking directly to the disciples, answering their specific questions about the temple and Jerusalem, and giving them real answers that would be meaningful to them in their lifetime. He simply is not looking past them and using this opportunity, to opine about twenty-first-century wars, tribulations, and late great planet earth style raptures. If you can make the text say that, you can twist it and manipulate it to say anything.
Here is the text we are going to be looking at today:
You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places, there will be famines and earthquakes. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs. - Matthew 24:6-8
THE PAX ROMANA
When Jesus says: “you will be hearing” He does not mean twenty-first century Christians who are eavesdropping on His conversation will hear about rumors of upcoming wars. He means “you”, as in the disciples who are looking Him in the eyes as He is speaking will hear these things. The disciples were going to be hearing of wars and rumors of war, which is more important than you may realize. Why?
When we open up our Bibles to the New Testament, we are ushered into a world that had recently experienced significant political volatility and massive change. After five hundred years of Senatorial rule in Rome, Julius Caesar successfully converted the burgeoning republic into an imperial empire with him as its sole dictator for life in 44 BC. That same year, He was violently assassinated on the senate floor, by men who hoped to convert the empire back into a Republic. But the plan backfired. Julius Caesar’s assassination plunged the newfound empire into years of chaos, confusion, and civil wars. Then after a decade of bloodshed and infighting, Julius Caesar’s adopted son, Octavius (also known as Augustus Caesar), emerged from the struggle to consolidate universal dictatorial power around himself, becoming the sole emperor of Rome by 31 BC.
As emperor, Augustus furthered the work of his father Julius by unifying the disparate Roman provinces into a single empire with a centralized Roman government. He put down all factions, dissenters, and enemies, which stabilized the empire and achieved the unthinkable reality of total empire-wide peace, which later Roman writers would dub the “Pax Romana” or in English the “peace of Rome”.
In essence, Augustus convinced the war-hungry and blood-thirsty population, who were used to ongoing and violent warfare, that peace would be a more profitable reality for the empire than protracted and risky wars. Being successful at this endeavor, Augustus and his predecessors brought the empire into an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity that existed for a full century, from 31 BC until 30 AD, before it began to break apart. Such an era of peace is not only miraculous in the ancient world, it has never been repeated on such a large scale, even to this day.
Under its second imperial emperor Augustus, the Roman empire was brought under such tremendous stability, that peace was the universal expectation for all her citizens. There were no wars, there were no rumors of wars, and the state existed in total control so that an unparalleled era of peace lasted for hundred years undisturbed by conflict. This is the time period and the setting that the disciples were born into and the very reason why the prospect of upcoming wars and rumors of wars would have been such a meaningful sign to them. Unlike us, they had never seen or heard of war.
WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS
Again, the opposite is true in our day. We do not live in an era of universal peace but an era characterized by constant war-waging and conflict among nations. In my lifetime alone, America has been involved in Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and the war with Isis. More recently, we have been bombarded with news about the war between Russia and Ukraine, and before that, it was the withdrawal from Afghanistan. To be frank, war is about as novel to us as water would be to a fish. That reality is not unique to our time period alone but has been true in almost every single era of human history. In fact, the century existing between 30 BC and 30 AD stands along as one of the most unique and consequential eras of large-scale peace in all of human history and certainly would be an apropos era to give the sign of “wars and rumors of wars”.
To that generation, who knew only Roman peace, Jesus warned that a coming era of instability in the empire would arise, so that they would hear about it and that it would become a sign of Jerusalem’s eventual downfall. This is exactly what ended up happening.
After Jesus’ crucifixion, the tenuous alliance between Rome and the Jews quickly evaporated. False messianic upstarts were popping up all over Judah, leading the people into a series of revolts against Rome. These attacks caused the superpower to tighten its grip on Judah at first, but when the revolts kept coming in increasing measure, Nero eventually ordered an all-out war on the Jews in 67 AD, dispatching his best general Vespasian to oversee the campaign.
Back home in the imperial city, Nero had become such a national embarrassment, for his increasingly erratic and insane behavior, that the senate was forced to act. In 68 AD, the Senate of Rome declared emperor Nero an enemy of the state, which led to his suicide just a few days later. The irony of this event cannot be understated. For it was the assassination of Julius Caesar that began the Julio Claudian line and the suicide of Nero Caesar that effectively ended it.
Nero’s suicide plunged the empire into a brief period of devastating civil wars that had not occurred since the Pax Romana began. In that turbulent period of about 18 months, four different emperors rose to power, bringing legions of armies upon the city of Rome one after another, with the first three being put down almost as soon as they propped themselves up on the throne. This caused the empire to teeter on the verge of permanent collapse and, if it were not for Emperor Vespasian, who was summoned away from the war with the Jews to become emperor, the whole empire would have devolved into a dramatic and permanent downfall.
THE POINT
While Jesus was alive and ministering in Judah, no one would have suspected an era of instability and war. Things were looking bright, hopeful, and peaceful within the empire. Yet, in perfect fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy, just forty years later, Rome was fighting multiple devastating civil wars, and defending herself from uprisings happening all throughout her territory, all while waging one of the most devastating campaigns ever waged against the hostile zealot nation of Judah. Out of thin air, an empire in a state of peace fell into all-out war, and Jesus Christ predicted it with brilliant clarity and accuracy.
When we read Matthew 24:6-8, we must not allow ourselves to be afraid. The wars and rumors of wars that Jesus mentioned were all a part of the downfall of Jerusalem (not a modern event) because of Judah’s covenant crimes against her God. In that period of forty years, God used all kinds of events to accomplish His plan, and today, we can celebrate that Jesus has gained tremendous glory from predicting these events and from ushering in a better era of peace than Rome could ever bring.
At the time, the Roman caesars were called “sons of god”, because they were the sons of Julius Caesar, a man who was declared a god postmortem. In Christ, we know the true Son of God. We know the one who will bring true peace on earth and goodwill to all men. And we know that He will accomplish this through His Church, who is declaring His Gospel to the ends of the earth. Do not be afraid when it comes to the end times.
We are living in the best era of human history. We are living in the Kingdom of God’s beloved Son. Today, may you be blessed as that thought works its way deeper and deeper into you!
