Luke 21:24, commentary and pictures

Luke 21:24 belongs to a combined prophecy about Jerusalem's destruction and Christ's coming at the end of the world, describing Jerusalem's ruin as one crisis while reaching beyond it to the final events of earth's history. It foretells a siege in which foreign armies surround the city and thousands of Jews perish, including people slain in the temple while offering sacrifices. These calamities warned the guilty nation to repent, for probation remained for a short time and the people could still learn what would bring them peace. Jerusalem was doomed to desolation because its people rejected Christ, and had they received His teaching and accepted Him as Saviour the city would have remained secure and become a source of peace to all nations, but instead Roman soldiers would enter and Roman banners would fly from its walls. The prophecy was fulfilled about forty years later, when Jerusalem was utterly destroyed and burned by the Roman army.

The suffering of Jerusalem and its people, with the city ruined and the people taken captive and dispersed among other nations, was the consequence of Israel's apostasy. The verse also points to Jerusalem later being restored and then brought under Roman rule. The warning of destruction and dispersion was foreshadowed in the priests' flight from the temple, whose fear and refusal to repent represented the nation's wickedness and impenitence that led to its dispersion. At the fall of the city, crucifixion, which had fallen out of use in Judea after Christ's death, was revived, and the Jews became its victims in great numbers. When the city suffered calamity, starvation, and other hardships, the Jews remembered the warning and understood that their suffering followed from neglecting their duty to let God-given light shine to the world.

The chapter containing the verse represents what people may expect in the last days, and its warnings and signs call for watchfulness and readiness for Christ's coming. It shows that we are living in the last days of this earth's history and should be studied for the sake of our own souls and the souls of others.