<p>24:6&nbsp;<i>And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars</i>- Gk. 'to come to the ears'. The dramatic growth of the media and communication will mean that everyone 'hears' of such things. And our generation as none before is in this situation. We can likewise understand the related word (in the Greek): &quot;<i>rumours</i>&nbsp;of wars&quot;. Lk. 21:9 adds &quot;and commotions&quot;, disquiet, mental upset and confusion. Hence the appeal not to be &quot;troubled&quot; within our hearts. Lk. 21:26 speaks of human hearts failing them for fear in worry and expectation (AV &quot;looking after&quot;) about the world's future. This sign, therefore, is not so much concerning the proliferation of war, but of human worry about the geopolitical situation. And our generation has been the only one capable of fulfilling this situation. Note, however, that&nbsp;<i>you</i>&nbsp;shall hear these things- and the &quot;you&quot; was initially the listening disciples. Clearly the prophecy was intended to have fulfilment in the lifetime of the disciples, but this didn't happen. Because the Divine program was rescheduled.</p><p><i>Ensure you are not alarmed</i>- The word is only used outside the Olivet prophecy in 2 Thess. 2:2, where Paul warns that believers should not be &quot;troubled&quot; by any idea that &quot;the day of Christ is at hand&quot;, because the prophecy concerning the great falling away and the man of sin sitting in the temple of God must be fulfilled first. This connection shows that the prophecy of 2 Thess. 2 must have a specific latter day fulfilment on the very eve of the Lord's visible return in glory when &quot;the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to nothing by the powerful glory of His coming&quot; (2 Thess. 2:8). The &quot;day of Christ&quot; is therefore the visible return of the Lord, and this, therefore, is the burden of the Olivet prophecy too. For Paul is taking that language and applying it to the second coming of Christ. And that did not happen in AD70. In Lk. 21:11 the Lord spoke of &quot;fearful sights&quot; being seen in latter-day Israel. During their tribulation, Israel will experience intense &quot;terror&quot; (Lev. 26:16), which would be enough to kill them (Dt. 32:24).&nbsp;&nbsp; This extraordinary level of fear will be modelled upon that of Jacob as he faced Esau- representing Israel's confrontation with the Arabs in the last days (Jer. 30:5,7).&nbsp;&nbsp; This state of fear will result in many Jews going to live in Jerusalem, as happened during the Babylonian and Assyrian invasions (Jer. 35:11).&nbsp;&nbsp; Ezekiel had prophesied of this time:&nbsp;&quot;Terrors (perhaps an intensive plural - i.e. 'the one great terror') by reason of the sword shall be upon My people&quot; (Ez. 21:12).&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p><i>For this must happen- but the end is not yet</i>- Quoting Dan. 2:28 LXX, as if the prophecy of Daniel 2 could have had its fulfilment at the time of the destruction of the temple in AD70. Again we encounter the idea of potential fulfilments of prophecy which in fact didn't happen when they could have done. The AV inserts in italics &quot;all these things&quot;, but the Lord has only given the sign of worry about wars at this stage in the discourse. He used the identical phrase in predicting that the &quot;all things&quot; of the Mosaic system were to be fulfilled in His death on the cross (5:18). The same term is used in Jn. 1:3: &quot;All things were fulfilled AV &quot;made&quot; in Him&quot;- surely a reference to the fulfilment of the Mosaic law in Christ. The &quot;old things&quot; of the Mosaic system passed away, and in Christ &quot;all things are fulfilled AV &quot;made&quot; new&quot; (2 Cor. 5:17- same Greek words). There was a changeover period permitted between the Mosaic system and that of Christ, which finished when the temple was destroyed in AD70 and obedience to the Mosaic law thereby became impossible. If this line of interpretation is correct, then we have the Lord hinting that the Mosaic system would be ended, the temple destroyed, but the end was still not to be then. This would again indicate that the events of AD70 were not the &quot;end&quot; which the Lord had in view. &quot;The end&quot; (s.w.) would only come when the Gospel was preached in the entire habitable world (:14) and the believers had been persecuted of all men (Mk. 13:13). But again, the Lord had in mind the possibility that the disciples themselves would endure &quot;unto the end&quot; (10:22; 24:13). It could have come in their lifetime; but it didn't. John's Gospel replaces the Olivet prophecy with the upper room discourse, in which the Lord spoke of His spiritual presence in the hearts of believers through the Comforter. And John's equivalent of &quot;the end&quot; in that discourse is the comment that the Lord Jesus loved His people &quot;unto the end&quot; through dying on the cross (Jn. 13:1 s.w.). This is not to downplay the reality of the second coming, but it is a foil against a mindset that thinks solely in terms of fulfilling prophecy and the literal coming of the Lord. True and wonderful as that is, the essence of the Lord's presence is in His abiding presence in the hearts of spiritually minded believers in Him, and the &quot;end&quot; is His death for us, which in one sense is enough for us all regardless of when He will literally return. But again, Paul, like his Lord, felt that &quot;the end&quot; could have come in the first century; for he writes of how the believers then were living at &quot;the end s.w. of the age&quot; (1 Cor. 10:11), when God's wrath against Israel was about to burst &quot;unto the end (AV &quot;to the uttermost&quot;; 1 Thess. 2:16).&nbsp; Likewise Peter: &quot;The end s.w. of all things is at hand&quot; (1 Pet. 4:7). Likewise Dan. 9:26 could then have had its fulfilment.&nbsp;</p>