<p>13:2 <i>And Jesus said to him: Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another. All will be thrown down</i>- This again expands upon His previous use of this word in Mt. 23:38: &quot;Your house is&nbsp;<i>left</i>&nbsp;unto you desolate&quot;. He is asking the disciples to see with the eye of faith- that effectively, the great stones of the temple were already thrown down, the temple was already &quot;desolate&quot; (Gk. 'a deserted place').</p><p>The judgment of the leprous house was to be thrown down, stone by stone (Lev. 14:41). At the time of the final assault on Jerusalem in AD69, Titus commanded that the temple was to be spared. But the Lord's words came true, just as all prophetic words will, despite every human effort to deny their power. Josephus claims that the gold of the temple melted and therefore each stone was prized apart to remove the gold.</p><p>There was a strong belief in Judaism that the temple would last eternally. Hence the disciples&rsquo; question about &ldquo;the end of the age&rdquo; was because for them, any talk about the end of the temple meant the end of the world. They are not therefore asking about different chronological events when they ask when this shall be, and what sign would indicate the end of the age. This prophecy of the destruction of the temple implied an ending of the Mosaic law. Hence the same word translated &quot;thrown down&quot; is ascribed to Stephen when he was accused of preaching that the Lord Jesus would &quot;<i>destroy</i>&nbsp;this place and therefore change the customs which Moses delivered us&quot; (Acts 6:14). Paul uses the same word about his 'destruction' of the things of legalistic dependence on the law for salvation, by preaching salvation by grace in Jesus (Gal. 2:18). It is also the word used in 2 Cor. 5:1, a passage which seems to have some reference to the impending destruction of the temple and its replacement with the spiritual house of God's building: &quot;Our earthly house of this tabernacle be&nbsp;<i>destroyed</i>&nbsp;s.w. &quot;thrown down&quot;, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands...&quot;. All this would suggest that there was a changeover period envisaged between the Lord's death and the final ending of the jurisdiction of the Mosaic law. Seeing the end Lord ended the Law on the cross, this again is to be seen as a concession to the conservatism of the Jews.</p>