<p>24:1</p><p>Matthew 24: Introduction<br />Old Testament prophecy was conditional. There can be no doubt about that. Take these words: &quot;Thus saith the Lord God unto the land of Israel: an end, the end is come upon the four corners of the land. Now the end is come upon thee, and I will send mine anger upon thee&quot; (Ez. 7:2,3). But the ultimate end did not come then in Ezekiel's time and the Babylonian destruction of the temple. God's program delayed that ultimate end. Perhaps because of His mercy, the repentance of a remnant, or for other reasons as yet unknown to us and unseen from our earthly viewpoint. My approach to the Olivet prophecy is that it was intended to be fulfilled in the first century- because this was the intended time or one of the intended times for the Lord&rsquo;s second coming and the establishment of the Kingdom. Therefore those aspects of the predictions which depended upon God to fulfil, He did e.g. earthquakes, famines. But the essential preconditions of Israel&rsquo;s repentance and the spread of the Gospel worldwide were not fulfilled. And so the prophecy has been rescheduled and reapplied to some later time- and it would appear that time is now upon us. This approach may be new to some, for it involves understanding God as &lsquo;open&rsquo;, and more responsive to human behaviour than we might have thought. If this is something you feel the need to still get your mind around, then the digression about the nature of prophecy may be helpful. If you have no problem with the idea of God&rsquo;s prophetic word being delayed or rescheduled in its fulfilment, then the digression doesn&rsquo;t need to be read.</p><p>We need not get overly worried about the supposed discrepancies between prophecy and its historical fulfilment. Such differences don't negate the Divine inspiration of the original prophecy- rather do they show how God's intentions can be worked out in different ways because of the open-ended approach He takes to human response. Thus it's been observed that the siege of Jerusalem in AD66-70 doesn't exactly follow the descriptions in Lk. 19:41-44 and 21:20-24. This would be because there were within the Olivet prophecy a number of possible scenarios of what could happen&nbsp;<i>if</i>&nbsp;the believers fled the city as commanded; and of course,&nbsp;<i>if</i>&nbsp;Israel repented and accepted Christ at His AD70 'coming' in judgment. Additionally we must remember that this prophecy was only having its initial fulfilment in AD70- the final fulfilment will be in our last days.</p><p>Martin Hengel concludes that the early Gospel records were so radical that they would&rsquo;ve been part of an &ldquo;underground literature&rdquo;. He suggests that the Roman law forbidding oral or written prophecies about the fall of the Roman empire- on pain of death- was enough to make the Olivet prophecy alone a highly illegal document (Martin Hengel,&nbsp;<i>Studies In The Gospel Of Mark</i>&nbsp;(London: SCM, 1985) p. 28).</p>