<p>21:12 <i>But more significantly than all these things, they shall lay their hands on you and shall persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for my name's sake</i>- &quot;The synagogues... the prisons&quot; - implying both a religious and civil persecution of the saints? The Lord predicted that His people would be cast out of the synagogues, as if He was happy that Christianity remained a sect of Judaism until such time as Judaism wouldn&rsquo;t tolerate it. His prediction that His people would be beaten in synagogues (Mk. 13:9) implies they would still be members, for the synagogues only had power to discipline their own members, not the general public. The Lord had no fear of &lsquo;guilt by association&rsquo; with wrong religious views such as there were within Judaism.</p><p>They were to be &quot;delivered up&quot; just as the Lord was 'betrayed' s.w. 10:4; 20:18,19; 26:2,15,16,21,23,24,25,45,46,48; 27:3,4; 17:22 &quot;the Son of Man shall be betrayed&quot; to the Jews and 'delivered up' to the Gentiles s.w. 27:18,26,2 &quot;delivered Him to Pontius Pilate&quot; for suffering, death- and thereby to resurrection. Again, there is an attempt to make those enduring these things identify with Him in His time of suffering. They too would be delivered up to both Jews and Gentiles- to synagogues Jews; 10:17; Lk. 21:12 and to prisons, rulers and kings Gentiles; Lk. 21:12; Mk. 13:9. Mark adds &quot;They shall deliver you up to councils and in the synagogues you shall be beaten&quot;. Clearly the Lord had in mind a first century fulfilment of His words, but as we have seen, not all the signs fulfilled in the first century and the Lord's&nbsp;<i>parousia</i>&nbsp;did not literally happen when the temple was destroyed. We therefore have to look to a re-scheduled fulfilment of these words in the persecution of the disciples in the last days.</p><p>The &quot;persecution&quot; is in Matthew &quot;to tribulation&quot;, the &quot;great&nbsp;<i>tribulation</i>&quot; (Mt. 24:21,29). The Lord was addressing the disciples, and yet their sufferings were not completely in line with the picture presented here, whereby their suffering was at the same time as Jerusalem was surrounded by armies. Clearly the intended program was delayed. John's equivalent of the Olivet prophecy is the upper room discourse, and the same idea of a woman in the sorrows of labour is to be found there, and also this same word for 'afflicted' is found, translated &quot;anguish&quot; and &quot;tribulation&quot;: &quot;A woman when she is in labour has...&nbsp;<i>anguish</i>... in the world you shall have&nbsp;<i>tribulation</i>&quot; (Jn. 16:21,33). The Lord seems to speak as if these experiences will be those of all His true followers, but just as His anguish and sorrow came to term in His triumphant resurrection, so for all who are in Him. John uses the language of the Olivet prophecy but seems to apply it in more general terms to the suffering of the believer in all ages. Surely this was consciously done as a response to the fact that the Olivet prophecy had been rescheduled in fulfilment. Again we find the idea of 'affliction' associated with the Lord's sufferings. Joseph, His clearest prototype, was 'afflicted' (Acts 7:10 s.w.), just as his brothers were 'afflicted' to lead them to repentance and acceptance of how badly they had treated Joseph / Jesus (Acts 7:11 s.w.). Stephen's use of the same word for the sufferings of both Joseph and his brothers was surely to teach that Israel's affliction was in order to teach them what they had done to Joseph, and to thereby identify with Him and repent. And this is exactly the purpose of Israel's latter day afflictions as outlined in the Olivet prophecy, and likewise the reason for the new Israel experiencing them- to help us identify with our crucified Lord. The same word is used in Rom. 8:35: &quot;Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?&quot;. Here Paul lists the kinds of tribulation outlined in the Olivet prophecy and assures his first century readers that these will never separate them from God's love- he clearly expected the prophecy to have a first century fulfilment. Likewise the Lord foresaw the possibility of the &quot;great tribulation&quot; coming upon the first century church (Rev. 2:22), and uses the same term &quot;great tribulation&quot; to describe the experiences of those Jewish Christians who would finally be saved (Rev. 7:14).&nbsp;</p>