“When Shall These Things Be?”
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he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” Some say that what Jesus was referring to in these verses was what happened six days later when His disciples saw Him in shining white on the mount of Transfiguration. But this would not accord with proper use of language, for why would He have indicated that some of them would still be living when He came, if He were only talking about something to happen in just six days? They would have needed to be so sick and old and near death that most of them would be dead within six days for His statement to make sense if that is what He was referring to. He was not talking about six days later, but about 40 years later, and in their generation. The disciples evidently understood His coming to be associated with the destruction of Jerusalem. Notice also that they spoke of the “sign of thy COMING” whereas in Mark 13:4 they speak of “the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled.” They definitely connected these events to His coming. The same thing is asked in Luke 21:7, “What sign will there be when THESE THINGS shall come to pass?” We cannot by-pass the connection of these words. The disciples definitely were not thinking of a future second coming of Christ thousands of years away from those events, but rather they associated those things with an actual coming of Christ in judgment and power at that time. His presence would be acknowledged when He arrived in such judgment. Jesus had told Caiaphas the high priest, “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64). When the disciples asked, “When shall these things be? and what shall be the SIGN of thy coming…?” the parallel reading in Mark 13:4, “What shall be the SIGN when all these things shall be fulfilled?” definitely indicates that the disciples considered His “coming” and “these things” to be identical events—that is, the sign of His coming was the same as the sign of those things, and those things were connected with the destruction of Jerusalem in the year A.D. 70. If language means anything at all, there is no way His “coming” (as mentioned here) could refer to an event many hundreds of years ahead still in our own future! So “THESE THINGS” are connected with His “COMING”! Third, they also associated “these things” with “the end of the world” But please note here that the word “world” is not from the Greek word “kosmos” which means the world and its inhabitants, nor “oikoumene”