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Mark For Everyone

MARK 13.1–13
Signs of the End...

...The place to start to understand this passage is in the middle, at verse 8: ‘These are the beginnings of the birthpangs.’

Jesus’ disciples would have known more about birthpangs than most modern men. I watched three of my four children being born, but that’s the limit of my first-hand experience of such matters. In the ordinary world of the ancient Middle East, and many other places to this day, a good deal of intimate family life goes on in a semi-public world. Everyone knows everyone else’s business; children grow up knowing from direct observation what today’s children learn from television; and the way babies are born – and the agonies it takes for a woman to give birth – are part of the common knowledge of everyday life.

The picture of birthpangs had been used for centuries by Jews as they reflected on the way in which, as they believed, their God was intending to bring to birth his new world, his new creation, the age to come in which justice and peace, mercy and truth would at last flourish...

Taken from Mark for Everyone by Tom Wright

Publisher: SPCK - view more
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