Predicting the Future? Reflections on Luke 21:5-19, Pentecost 23, Year C
by John C. Holbert on Thursday, July 3, 2025
Today we are offered one of those passages that over the years has stirred up no little mischief in its readers. Here Jesus warns his disciples, while standing in the temple in Jerusalem, concerning events that he says are about to occur. Over the years since Luke’s writing, any number of so-called interpreters have attempted to find in these words clues for uncovering what Christians can expect now and in the future. There is mention of “earthquakes, famines, and plagues,” fodder for speculative reflections of all sorts: which earthquakes? How bad a famine? What sort of plague? Mountebanks in various and sundry guises have expatiated on these mysteries, and in the process have found ways to make money for their pains. Ironically, according to Luke, writing sometime in the 80s of the first century, his comments are less future-oriented than rooted in the recent past.
Some of Jesus’ disciples are chatting with him about the temple, its “beautiful stones and votive offerings” (or “gifts dedicated to God” NRSV). But Jesus has something rather darker in mind: “These things you are looking at—days are coming when there will not be one stone on another; all will be thrown down” (Luke 21:6). Just like Jesus to dampen a pleasant tourist visit with such claims! His ominous prediction leads the disciples to some earnest questions: “Teacher, when will this be? What will be the sign that these things are about to occur?” (Luke 21:7). The reality is that it has all already happened! The temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70CE, at least a decade before Luke’s composition of his Gospel. Thus, Luke here demonstrates just how Jesus is prophet—what he predicts comes to pass. All who are reading the story know all too well what the Romans did to the Jerusalem temple, Herod’s grand edifice. Unlike the similar material in Mark’s Gospel, where he speaks of “the end of all things,” Luke to the contrary speaks here of the end of the city of Jerusalem.
Jesus warns his disciples about “many who will come in my name, who will say, ‘I am he!’ And ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them!” (Luke 21:8). Here Luke makes it plain that no one should follow any who claim that doom of any sort is imminent. “Do not panic,” he says, using a much stronger verb than is found in Mark and Matthew, who favor “troubled” (throeomai) to Luke’s ptoeo (“strike with panic”). In addition, Luke speaks of “revolutions,” instead of “rumors of war” in Mark, perhaps speaking of the political chaos that ensued in Rome after Emperor Nero’s death in 68CE. “For these things must happen first, but the end is not immediate.” Luke works hard to separate belief in predictions of the end of time from Jesus’s predictive claims about the city of Jerusalem.
He then speaks of “earthquakes, famines, and plagues,” along with “terrors and great signs from heaven” (Luke 21:11), but then adds a very important editorial note, found only in his Gospel: “But before all these things they will lay hands on you and persecute you, hand you over to synagogues and prisons, lead you away to kings and governors on account of my name” (Luke 21:12). Thus, Luke makes it plain that the sufferings of his followers will occur before the fall of the city of Jerusalem. Why is it so important for Luke to make it clear that his interest is in the fall of Jerusalem, and the struggles of him and his followers before that event? Luke Timothy Johnson, in his 1991 commentary, is helpful in this regard (pp.319-326).
He names three specific results of reading Luke’s literary intentions for this pericope. First, Johnson says, Luke emphasizes here the role of Jesus as prophet, a role he has assigned to Jesus from the beginning of his work. Jesus speaks for God, but also predicts the future accurately, not unlike the famous Delphic oracle known throughout the world of the first century. Also, the Hebrew Bible prophet Jeremiah spoke against the temple, too, and it did indeed fall to the Babylonians (Jer.28:7-9). If Jesus may be trusted to know the future with accuracy, he may then be trusted in other matters of which he speaks. Second, Luke changes the overtly apocalyptic material from his Markan source, and speaks rather of specific historical incidents rather than speculations about the end times. Third, he emphasizes the suffering of the followers of Jesus before the fall of Jerusalem, using language that is echoed in the tales about the struggles of those followers in the book of the Acts. Thus, Jesus’s predictions have been fulfilled in Luke’s own story, as he relates it in his second volume. Jesus as prophet may be fully trusted in his words, as the ongoing narrative fulfillment of those words make plain.
It remains a mystery to me how anyone could continue to use these words of Luke 21 to predict some contemporary events—earthquakes, famines, plagues, etc.—when Luke has gone out of his way to warn readers against those very predictive speculations! And, further, has warned readers, using Jesus’ own words, that “many will come in my name.” Do not be deceived, he says, and yet, countless thousands over the centuries have in fact been deceived by dangerous and ignorant speculators of every conceivable stripe. It has often been said that “there is one born every minute,” but that is not completely true; in fact, there are thousands born every minute and of the number of the gullible there appears to be no end!
Luke’s Jesus is not in the broad predictive speculative business. He is in the prophetic business, trying to lead his followers away from foolishness toward becoming seekers of the truth he brings, away from empty words of little value to the saving word of the master who has come to make us all one in the search for justice and shalom.