When was Jesus's Not One Stone Prophecy fully fulfilled?

You might think the answer to that is obvious and well known, but you'd be surprised.  First I'm going to quote the account of the Prophecy from Mark 13:1-2 since I think it's the most complete account of exactly what Jesus in this case.

And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, "Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!" And Jesus answering said unto him, "Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down".

Notice that it isn't JUST about The Temple, it's about all the Buildings, plural.  

While Matthew and Luke's account of this in their main Olivet Discourse chapters downplay the inclusion of other buildings, Luke 19:44 also refers to not one stone being left, with The Temple not even being the focus, that Prophecy is about the entirety of Jerusalem.

The 9th of Av in AD 70 (presumed to be August 4th on the Roman Calendar) as recorded in Josephus Wars of The Jews Book VI Chapters 4-5 is the day The Temple was destroyed in the sense of not being able to be used as a Temple anymore.  Remember what happened to the Notre Dame Cathedral a few years ago?  The worst case scenario people were fearing that day is basically what happened to The Temple on the 9th of Av.  The next day however as recorded by Josephus in Wars Book VI Chapter 6 there are clearly still standing ruins.  

The beginning of Book VII is when Titus demolishes even those ruins and thus this is where most Christians talking about AD 70 via Josephus (both Preterists and Futurists) say the Not One Stone Prophecy was fulfilled.  Except Josephus tells us there were three towers that Titus left standing, in my view as long as those three towers were still standing this Prophecy of Jesus was incomplete.

In AD 131 Emperor Hadrian while visiting Jerusalem after ending his extended stay in Egypt announced his plans to rebuilt Jerusalem as a Greco-Roman City with a Temple to Zeus being built over the former site of The Temple.  I think the early stages of that project is when even those three remaining towers were torn down.  

Then after Hadrian left the Near East for Asia Minor in 132 the Bar Kokchba Revolt broke out.  That probably stalled the reconstruction project even though the Rebels never held Jerusalem during that war.  Then after the revolt was put down in 135 the project restarted.

A Millennium already past

This post shall be me playing Devil's Advocate with Post-Millenialists and Partial Preterists, by arguing that their eschatological position does not necessarily require allegorizing the time period of The Millennium.

There is a common misnomer out there that believing in a Literal Thousand Years means believing The Kingdom of that time period ends at some point, which is why you occasionally see an argument that the Nicene-Constantinople Creed's quotation of Gabriel in Luke 1:33 somehow was specifically a refutation of Pre-Mil.  However the only thing Revelation 20 explicitly says happens exactly a Thousand years later is Satan being let out of the Abyss, he then stirs up Gog and Magog and they besiege the "Beloved City" however their siege fails.  Revelation 21 and 22 are about the separation between the spiritual and physical finally completely ending, not about a completely New Messianic Kingdom starting.  The Greek word translated New in those chapters isn't Neo which I wrote an entire post on already.

Now at face value it seems like everything from Satan being let loose to the White Throne Judgment happens pretty rapidly.  But that's because we're reading a summary, maybe it will happen quickly but it could theoretically all take decades, centuries or maybe even another thousand years to play out.

So Post-Mils and Partial Preterists do have the option to consider identifying The Millennium with an exactly one Thousand year time period of recorded Church Age history, and placing us right now in Revelation 20:9 with the "Camp of the saints" being understood spiritually rather then tied to a specific geographical location.

And in that context I have a few hypothetical models to propose, because even though I'm not Post-Mil currently I have considered it.  

But first I want to address how most of these models implicitly identity the "Hoards of Gog and Magog" with principally the Turks and perhaps by extension other Altaic peoples like the Mongols.  This part of Revelation is among the Bible passages that have been abused by White Supremacists so I want to make myself clear, IF any of these interpretations are true it's about the Turks having a specific role to play in God's plan, however I believe in Universal Salvation meaning all of them are still Children of Adam who God Loves as much as everyone else.  So do not use this material to justify being Racist.

Now on to the hypothetical Millenniums.

I place the end of the 70 Weeks of Daniel in 37 AD one Week following the Crucifixion, Resurrection and Pentecost in 30 AD, which I argued for on this blog years ago.  Low and behold 1037 AD is the beginning of the reign of Tughril the first Sultan of the Seljuk Turks.  It was under his leadership that the Turks first moved south of the Gates of Alexander into Persia.

However it was under Alp Arslan and Malik Shah that the Seljuk Turks first came into conflict with "Christendom" around 1070 AD.  The significance of 1070 minus 1000 I shouldn't need to explain to Preterists.

In 1135 AD a thousand years after the defeat of the Bar-Kochba Revolt Seljuk Ruler Imad Al-Din Zengi crossed the Eurphrates River.  1137-1144 contained other notable events.

Later in the early 1300s a Thousand years after Constantine is when the Ottomans under Osman I and Orhan and other Turkic Tribes conquered deeper into Western Anatolia capturing what had long been core Byzantine territories including the cities that housed the 7 Churches of Revelation 2-3. They besieged Nicaea just a few years after the one thousand year anniversary of the Council of Nicaea.  324 was the year Constantine defeated Licinius and began the founding of Constantinople, 1317-1326 was the Seige of Bursa which secured Ottoman control of most of Asia Minor with only the core area around Constantinople still free.

The decade from 380-390 is when Theodosius I firmly established Christianity as the State Religion of the Roman Empire.  Ticonius published the first real Post-Millennial interpretation of Revelation in 380.  A thousand years later 1380-1390 would be when the Ottoman Empire really began entering Europe.

The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans was in 1454 BC, about 3 years following the Millennial Anniversary of the Council of Chalcedon.

There isn't a single event in the reign of Emperor Justinian that doesn't have it's Millennial anniversary during the reign of Suliman The Magnificent.  I actually already made a post on arguing for Bible Prophecy being fulfilled in the time of Justinian, that was mainly in the context of playing Devil's Advocate with Historicism, but it can be adapted for this purpose.

Some people have an odd fixation on viewing Bible Prophecy from an Anglo-Centric POV.  Interestingly the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons was pretty complete by 640.  One thousand years later and 1640 is when the English Civil War starts.

Judah and The Oriental Churches

In My View on Modern Israel in Bible Prophecy I hypothesized against those that casually refer to Modern Jews as if they're just Judah that if they are one of the Sothern Tribes more so then the other it's actually Benjamin due to things like Rashi via Hillel's Benjamite ancestry.  And applied that equally to the Ahskenazim, Shephardi and other Jewish populations.

Still that is not 100%,.  Judahite ancestry does exist among those Jewish populations and I suspect Benjamite ancestry also does among who I'll discus below.  As well as the mingling into both of Levi, Simeon and the Northern Israelites who weren't deported in Western Manasseh, Asher, Issachar and Zebulun.

If that is the case however then who is Judah today?  I've argued before that I think a larger percentage of 1st Century Judeans converted to Christianity then is popularly assumed after the 66-73 AD War annihilated those sects most hostile to early Christianity.  So we should perhaps look for some Jewish ancestry among ancient Christian populations.

Much of this is a theory that works Ecclesiastically or Clerically rather then only Genealogically.  Part of why I distinguish myself from Two House Theology is because Ezekiel 37 has Judah and Joseph both bringing companions, Gentile Believers, with them.  Even The Torah allows people who don't biologically descend from Jacob or even Abraham to be adopted into Israel.  

Deuteronomy 23:7 makes specific reference to allowing Mizraimites (Egyptians) and Edomites in.  I note this because for most of the Divided Kingdom period it was primarily the Southern Kingdom that maintained contact and relationships with Egypt and Edom while The North traded with Syria, the Mediterranean world and eventually Assyria.  So they may well be a factor in looking for Judah in Christian history.

I think the first thing we should look into is the fate of the original Jerusalem Church.  It was lead by James and the other Half-Brothers and Nephews of Jesus while the Twelve and Paul inevitably left to spread The Gospel throughout the world.  The Half-Siblings of Jesus were even more undeniably Judahite then Jesus was as being biological sons of Joseph probably gave them through Matthew's genealogy David's Y-Chromosome.  I still believe Mary descended from Nathan Ben-David, but that line is neither directly Matrilineal or Patrilineal in my speculation so probably wasn't how her family's Tribal Identity was formally classified.  I think in general New Testament era Galileans descended from Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun.

The Jewish Jerusalem Church  around 70 AD moved to Pella(in modern Jordan), but some returned to remain The Church of Jerusalem until the Bar Kockhba revolt.  After that I believe they fled to Syria where I agree with the theory that they became the Nazarenes known to Epiphanius and Jerome in the late 4th century located chiefly in Aleppo and Bashan, Epiphanius in Panarion even seems to admit they descend from the exiled Jerusalem Church.  Jerome tells us they had a Syraic text of Matthew's Gospel.  

Over the course of the 5th and early 6th Century the Chalcedonian Schism in Syria was eventually split among Linguistic lines, the Greek speakers sided with Chalcedon while the West Syraic Churches (except the Maronites) mostly took the Miaphysite position becoming part of the Oriental Orthodox Church, I suspect the Nazarenes were slowly Gentilized and mingled with other Liturgically Aramaic groups, who may have also partly descended from 1st Century Jewish Converts and became the modern Syraic Orthodox Church.  The City of Damascus had a Jewish Christian population already before Paul's conversion in Acts 9.

There are also claims out there that the Jerusalem Church relocated to Edessa after the bar Kockba Revolt.  Edessa like nearby Nisibis already had a significant Jewish population during the Kitos War in the reign of Trajan.  And it became an important center for Syriac Orthodoxy during the 6th Century AD.  It was largely during the Young Turks' persecutions that the Syriac Christians of this region were forced to move South, the seat of their Patriarch of Antioch was in nearby Mardin till 1933.

Near the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem there is a Syriac Orthodox Monastery of St Mark which claims to be the actual site of the Upper Room of The Last Supper and Pentecost, the birth place of The Church.  It is I feel much more likely to be authentic then the more well known mainstream Cenacle location south of the Zion Gate who's origins are clearly Crusader era.  The Upper Room being in the house of St Mark's mother (from Acts 12:12) does fit in with common theories about who Mark is in his Gospel in chapter 14 verses 13-15.  This Church is currently the seat of the Syriac Bishop of Jerusalem.

Josephus in Wars of The Jews Book VII Chapter 3 Section 3 says that the Jewish nation is widely dispersed throughout the world but particularly intermingled with Syria.  Meaning he's possibly suggesting that by this point even most gentile Syrians had some Jewish ancestry.  In The Hebrew Bible back in II Kings 14:28 Hamath is referred to as belonging to Judah, even though this is during the divided Kingdom and Hamath is north of the Northern Kingdom, so it seems some of the mingling was already happening back then.

There are six other Churches that make up the Oriental Orthodox Communion today.  The Malankara Church is a community that was Ancient Church of The East (often misleadingly called Nestorian) until later then the Protestant Reformation, so I don't particularly feel the need to factor them into this thesis.  However for the record I'll state my belief that the Saint Thomas Christians are Elamite in their Genesis 10 ancestry via the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis.

The Coptic Church is obviously chiefly Mizraimite.  Jewish Communities were established in Egypt during the time of Jeremiah including the daughters of Zedekiah and before that King Jehoahaz who was taken hostage, and at some point during this era a Jewish Temple was built on Elephantine Island which may go back to the time of King Manasseh.  Then more came there after Alexander founded Alexandria, and later Onias IV set up his Temple at Leontoplis near Heliopolis.  The Nubians I think also descended from sons of Mizraim, the medieval Christian Nubian Kingdoms were also mostly Oriental Orthodox.

I've argued for connecting the Armenians to Judah already in my last Lost Tribes post.  The Holy See of Cilicia is also Armenian in origin from an Armenian Kingdom that existed there contemporary with the Crusades.  That the Armenian quarter in Jerusalem is next to the Jewish Quarter and resides on part of what Josephus identified as Mt Zion is interesting.  I also noted there the close relationship between Armenia and Georgia, the Georgian or back then Iberian Church was temporarily with the Oriental Orthodox during the 6th Century.

And the Ethiopian/Axum Church as well as Eritrea are also explained in part of my Languages of the Table of Nations post.  But I can add that I still think Bob Cornuke and Graham Hancock's thesis on The Ark going to Axum via Elephantine and Tana Kirikos could be valid, even though many other theories associated with those authors I either never did or no longer support.  The Ark being with Judah now would fit the typology of my Benjamin post since The Ark was in KirathJearim during the entire reign of the House of Saul.  

Armenia and Ethiopia also both use Red Lions as National Symbols.

The Ghassanid Arabs of late antiquity were an Oriental Orthodox Community that is no longer around.  Given where they mainly ruled and their Yemeni origins I suspect they were Edomites.  And they may have descendants today mingled into various Oriental Orthodox communities in the Arab world.

This thesis also holds for the various Eastern Rite Catholic Churches that were originally part of above mentioned Oriental Orthodox Churches until schisms that started in the 1700s.  In part the Catholic Church is a Christian Era manifestation of the same impulse to try and merge true YHWH worship with Idolatry and Polytheism that Israel frequently struggled with throughout the Hebrew Bible.  During the divided Kingdom era those tendencies may have more consistently ruled the North but Judah was still susceptible, Jeremiah condemned worshiping the "Queen of Heaven" and then Catholics went and gave that exact same title to Mary.

I may add to this post in the future additional tidbits.  But that is all the core argument.

Can every argument for applying The Olivite Discourse to 70 AD fit the Bar Kochkba Revolt even better?

My answer is not Luke 21 but definitely Mark 13 and Matthew 24 if they can be interpreted Preteristically at all.

First of all even the Preterist interpretation of "this generation", as I documented when arguing for my late date for Revelation there were indeed eyewitnesses to Jesus still around in the reign of Hadrian.

70 AD Preterists obsess over an argument that a Biblical Generation is 40 years because the wandering in the wilderness was to kill off a generation.  But not all of them actually died, that statement was hyperbole, it was mostly just about the 10 spies who gave the bad report.  Numbers 14:33-24 clarifies it was 40 years because the spy mission was 40 days.  Genesis 6 and the lifespan of Moses support making a Biblical generation up to 120 years.

Matthew 24 is the one I'm most strictly futurist on because of certain details completely unique to it, but rhetorically I shall  keep it in mind here.

With Luke 21 it's unique characteristics are what makes it most applicable to 70 AD.  Only Luke 21 actually uses the name of Jerusalem at all, when foretelling it's desolation which is language borrowed from Jeremiah about the fall to Nebuchadnezzar indicating what happened to Jerusalem then will happen again.

But Luke 21 does NOT contain a statement that this time of trouble is will never be surpassed.

The Bark Kochba revolt did not add anything to the destruction of Jerusalem since this time the Rebels never even had Jerusalem to begin with.  But for Judea as a whole that war was far more catastrophic and destructive then the 66-73 AD war and over a shorter period of time.   Many historians consider this the real beginning of the Diaspora.  It is only the fact that it doesn't have it's own Josephus that makes it less analyzed by historians and scholars and less romanticized by artists and poets.

Luke 21 is about things that happened before the "beginnings of sorrows", Matthew 24 about things that happen after, and Mark 13 about things that happen during.  Meanwhile the second time Matthew and Mark's discourses bring up the issue of False Christs has no parallel in Luke at all.

This is significant because contrary to popular opinion the era leading up to and during the 66-73 AD war was NOT filled with would be Messiahs.  Josephus only ever uses the word Christ when describing what Jesus was called. There were would be prophets, and secular revolutionaries, but no claimed Messiahs.  Jewish prophetic expectations of the time were generally that the Messiah can't come till after Rome has already fallen.

Bar Kochba was the first to ever claim to be the Messiah as a rebel leader, that was his innovation.  And he really was the second person after Jesus to ever truly claim that title at all.  Meanwhile since Preterists don't take literally the stuff involving the Sun, Moon and Stars, maybe Stars falling from heaven is also wordplay on the name of Bar Kochba?  Kukbe is the word used in the Peshita?

The Abomination of Desolation is a very specific phrase, that has connotations more specific then just the etymological meanings of the words used to construct it.  Of the two places where the phrase appears in Daniel the one in chapter 12 is probably what Jesus is revealing to still have at least one more yet future fulfillment.  But it's the context in Daniel 11 that defines it.

There are three or four different Hebrew words that get translated "Abomination" in the KJV, the one used in Daniel is not even related to the one used in Leviticus 18-20 and Ezekiel 40-48.  But more importantly to the topic at hand, the precise one used in Daniel is everywhere it appears a synonym for an Idol or False god, from Deuteronomy 29:17 to 1 Kings 11 to Jeremiah 32:34.

But what makes the Abomination of Desolation special is it's being placed inside The Temple (not near it) by a Pagan ruler who had outlawed their faith.  The history of the Hasmonean revolt was to first century Jews not just the reason behind Hanukkah, it was to them as the Revolutionary War or French Revolution is for modern America and France.  When Jesus used this phrase he knew exactly what imagery he was evoking and so did His audience.

Now I'm open to a more "creative" interpretation of what a Futurist fulfillment of this for Matthew 24 may look like, but that's about redefining what this would mean for the New Testament Church with the help of II Thessalonians 2 just as we redefine a number of Hebrew Bible concepts under the doctrine that now we are The Temple.  If you're going to insist this is about the Judea of that time, then you have to be specific to what that idea meant to those Judeans.

70 AD Preterists bend over backwards coming up with every excuse they can to apply that phrase to something that happened in 70 AD.  They take a passage from the Talmud claiming Titus had sex with a whore on a Torah scroll and sliced open the veil with his sword.  Leaving aside how I doubt Titus would have had the means, motive or opportunity to do that from what the actual eyewitness Historian tells us, even this Talmud passage doesn't call that an Abomination of Desolation or compare it to Antiochus Epiphanes in any way.

The timing is also wrong, by the time Titus was able to anything anywhere near The Temple it was already too late to run.  Jesus speaking of the Abomination of Desolation as an event that begins the time of trouble not occurring at the middle or end of it. That fit Hadrian who's said to have set up the initial Idol in 31 AD sparking the Rebellion even though the full Temple is built after.

Preterists aren't the only ones refusing to distinguish between the Olivet Discourses, there are also Futurists who want to use Luke 21 to say Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies again.

Yes the three discourses are "parallel" in a lot of ways, but the differences are there for a reason and ignoring them because you don't want to think Jesus was foretelling more then one thing is simply not respecting the text.  In the case of Luke it has to do with how this isn't even the only place that Gospel records Jesus talking about the fall of Jerusalem, that is a theme of the entire Gospel in a way it's not in the others.

So plenty of people want to argue that Luke 21:20 is about the same thing as The Abomination of Desolation because Jesus then advises basically the same reaction.  As if there can't be more then one good reason to get out of Dodge.

Remember the OG Abomination of Desolation preceded that Jewish revolt, and since they won that war the city was never surrounded by armies.

One of the oldest examples of Patristic support for viewing the Abomination of Desolation as already re-fulfilled is Jerome applying the term to the Statue of Hadrian set up where The Temple formally stood which was still standing when he wrote his commentary on Matthew.  Jerome may have been off on saying it was specifically over the Holy of Holies, in the Bordeaux Pilgrim the two Statues he saw were separate from the "stone" the Jews anointed which I think may have been where the Ark once rested.  Epiphanes' statue was on the Brazen Altar according to 1 Maccabees 1:54-59.

We even have a secular pagan gentile source on this happening, Cassius Dio.

[69.12.1] At Jerusalem, Hadrian founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the [Jewish] god, he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration, 

[69.12.2] for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there. So long, indeed, as Hadrian was close by in Egypt and again in Syria, they remained quiet, save in so far as they purposedly made of poor quality such weapons as they were called upon to furnish, in order that the Romans might reject them and they themselves might thus have the use of them. But when Hadrian went farther away, they openly revolted.

Meanwhile somewhat less reliable sources like the Historia Augusta say Hadrian also banned Circumcision and sacrificed Pigs to this Idol making it echo Antiochus Epiphanes even more.  And like then this caused the war rather then being caused by it.  It seem Pigs were depicted on Coins minted in Aelia Capitolina.

And like in 70 AD the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem did as Jesus advised and fled, becoming the Nazarenes of later generations, some may have went to Mesopotamia and also became among the ancestors of the "Nestorians" or other Syraic Rite sects.

The Lords Day is The Sabbath not Sunday

First I want to make clear I'm not a Seventh Day Adventist or a member of any any other Sabbath based sect. I do not support Legalism, Christians are not bound to observe any weekly service, at all. I'm writing this to refute the notion that The New Testament "Lords Day" is Sunday.

Not everyone who believes weekly Sunday worship is Biblical defines it as Sunday supplanting the Sabbath.  Some like Chris White  just define it as the New Testament ordaining weekly Sunday worship as a separate thing from The Sabbath.  I'm making this post in response to any form of suggesting The New Testament ordains weekly Sunday worship.

In The New Testament the term "The Lord's Day" occurs only once. Revelation 1:10 "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet".

We're not told what day of the week this is, or if it's a weekly day at all. Sunday supporters just assume this phrase means something distinct from the Sabbath and therefore it backs up their other reasons for saying The New Testament calls for worship on the First Day of The Week.

But in Matthew 12:8 Jesus said he was the Lord of the Sabbath, and Isaiah 58:13-14 calls the Sabbath, "The LORD's Holy Day". So using Scripture to Interpret Scripture this can only mean the Sabbath.

As far as extra Biblical references go (which don't actually matter to me). The Didache (supposedly the oldest Extra-Biblical Christian writing) also does not say when "The Lord's Day" is, just refers to it. The one quote of Ignatius of Antioch often used in this debate dated to 110 A.D. says in the only surviving Greek text (which is the language he wrote in) "If, then, those who had walked in ancient practices attained unto newness of hope, no longer observing Sabbath, but living according to the Lord's life ...". Clearly not about when or if we should do a weekly observance at all, simply referring to us not being bound by The Law. Some later Latin texts add "The Lord's Day" to this, and some even make clear it's Sunday, but these are clearly latter corruptions.

It's not till the second half of the Second Century A.D. that indisputable references to The Lord's Day being Sunday occur, in texts like the Apocryphal Gospel of Peter, or Acts of Peter, or Acts of Paul, or Acts of John, or Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth in 170 A.D. You might think that sounds sufficiently early, but they're after the Bar Kochba revolt which occurred around about a third of the way into the Second Century. That is when the Church started taking on Anti-Semitic tendencies in response to the persecution of Christians carried out under Bar Kochba, I've written on this elsewhere. I feel this separation of Christian observance from the Sabbath was based solely on that agenda.

Now, for Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2.

The Corinthians reference is to me certainly not about weekly observance. "Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." One could argue that Paul expected his Epistle to be read to the congregation on a Sabbath meeting, and that they should then begin saving up this money the very next day.

Acts 20:7 I don't really see as calling for anything. It just says they broke bread together, and then Paul preached.

I personally find the debating that goes own between Protestant and Evangelical denominations on when to observe the "Lord's Supper", should it be Weekly, Monthly or Yearly, and so on to be silly. Jesus told us when in the actual account of the Supper itself "when ye eat". It's not supposed to be an appointed ceremony, it's simply a matter of whenever we eat we remember that Jesus's Body was Broken and his Blood was Shed for us.

And Paul I don't think needed a special day to Preach on either, Preaching is simply what he did.

But another thing about the Acts reference is it's a Translation issue.

If your ability to check the Greek is only via using a Strongs, or a Strongs based Computer Program, then you probably just saw that the two words translated "first day of the week" here are the same every time that phrase is used of The Resurrection of Jesus. But the thing is the Strongs tells us nothing about grammar or word forms. And the word for Week here, even used in this exact same form "Sabbatwn" is also used in contexts that are indisputably about the Sabbath day, like in Acts 13:14 and 16:13 and Colossians 2:16. The Colossians reference BTW clearly implies in context that early Christians were keeping all those observances refereed to.

Almost no English Translations translate this phrase differently, but that doesn't mean the majority can't be wrong. What leads me to support the minority view here is the anomaly that occurs in my Greens Interlinear Bible.

In the Column on the side where the Greens puts things in a way that grammatically works in English, it reads like most translations "The first day of the week". But where the English words are placed under the actual Greek text it reads "on one of the Sabbaths". Reading the whole narrative in context I feel supports that reading.

Acts 20:6-7 "And we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and came unto them to Troas in five days; where we abode seven days. And on one of the Sabbaths, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight."

Being so soon after the Days of Unleavened Bread means this is during the counting of the Omer, the Seven Sabbaths that pass between First fruits and Pentecost. So "one of the Sabbaths" probably means one of those Seven Sabbaths.

Even if we take the KJV at face vale, that it's between First Fruits and Pentecost means it's not a First Day of the Week that wasn't already ordained by the Torah in Leviticus 23.

Likewise The Resurrection and Pentecost were on Sundays because Leviticus 23 ordained them to be, those Sundays being important did not introduce anything new.

I keep hearing that ALL of Jesus post Resurrection appearances were on Sundays from the Evangelical Sunday supporting people.

Besides that it's well known The Ascension was a Thursday being day 40 of the Omer (Acts 1:3).  Most of them aren't clearly dated at all besides ones that occurred on the very Sunday of the Resurrection.  Or what John 20:26 says for the Doubting Thomas incident which mathematically does NOT tell me it was the same Day of the Week as the previews event.  Eight Day would make it at the same day of the week, but after eight days makes it a day later.

When you read through Acts, you'll see Sabbath observances are definitely still kept by Early Christians, even Paul. Even if the word Sabbath isn't used, if Paul is disputing with Jews in a Synagogue, you can infer that it is a Sabbath or a New Moon or a Holy Day. And for this reason it's clear that even the Mars' Hill Sermon was preached on a Sabbath not a Sunday, in Acts 17:16-19.

Ezekiel 45 clearly has the Sabbath still being observed in the Messianic Temple.  And I believe that is the New Heaven and New Earth not The Millennium.

So what day we do a weekly observance is not something to be Dogmatic on. Or even if we do a weekly observance at all.  I'm ultimately against the entire modern definition of what a church is, archaeology shows no church buildings were built till the Third Century. But the evidence both Biblical and Extra-Biblical shows that the first 2 or 3 generations of The Church met on the Jewish Sabbath, not Sunday.

But there is something else I want to note on the Western Sunday worship issue.  I was raised Catholic, and I remember during a catechism class on the Ten Commandments they showed a corny little video about a kid being a stubborn brat for not wanting to wake up early on Sunday morning to go to church.  I felt like the whole being a Day of Rest part of the command was being contradicted by forcing someone to wake up before it came naturally to them.  I didn't say that because I knew they'd just find applying that logic to be outright bizarre.

You see besides just changing what Day we should observe the Sabbath command on, we don't follow the Biblical definition of when a day begins either.  Sunset of the previous day is when the Day begins for Jews.  Jews and Torah observing Christians do their Sabbath worship service after the Sun sets on Friday, they do not worry about waking up early in the morning.  The Priests in The Temple may have had to get up early to make the morning offerings, but their responsibilities were different from most people.  If an additional Synagogue service happened during the daylight hours of The Sabbath, it wasn't first thing after Sunrise.

The Women came to Jesus Tomb early Sunday morning precisely because it wasn't a Sabbath, they came to do something they couldn't do on The Sabbath.  If you want to do a Sunday service based on The Resurrection, when they fond the Tomb Empty isn't the time you should use, but rather much later in the day when Jesus appeared to the Disciples which was at dinner time, or the Road to Emmaus which was a little earlier then that.  The reference to Bread there isn't a coincidence, they keeping the seven day feast of unleavened bread, of which I believe the Resurrection and First Fruits of that years was the third day, the 17th of Nisan.

But now after all that I want to advice my fellow Sabbath advocates not to make the ridiculous "Sunday is because of Sun worship" argument.  As I showed early on there were pre Constantine Christians claiming the Lord's Day was Sunday because of Anti-Semitism.  Constantine probably choose Sun Worhip to try and meld Christianity with because they happened to be worshiping that day already.

Each day of the week has a Pagan god attached to it on secular calendars.  That the Jewish Sabbath is Saturday was used by confused ancient Pagans like Tacitus to argue the Jewish God was actually Saturn.  That the Pilgrimage Feast days all revolved around the Harvest cycle probably would have backed that if he'd been aware of it, with Saturn being the god of the harvest.

Jesus is called by Malachi the Sun of Righteousness, and Genesis 1 says he Sun, Moon and stars were given for times and for seasons.  So I think it's fitting that He rose from the dead at sunrise on Sunday.

The Olivite Discourse, Mark

Mark, also is distinct from the other two, and is generally set aside.

Starting again with the setting, Mark's more resembles Matthew's as it's a private teaching and not a public sermon. But while in Matthew all the Disciples are implied to be present, Mark 13:3 says "And as he sat upon the mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately". So this is even more selective knowledge, at least at first.

Now for Mark's version of the core set of signs all 3 have in common.

Mr 13:5 And Jesus answering them began to say, Take heed lest any man deceive you: For many shall come in my name, saying, I am He; and shall deceive many.  And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

What I neglected to address here before is that the "be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet." And it's equivalent wording in the other accounts is basically saying these aren't signs at all. Chuck Missler likes to call them the "non signs". Their about conditions that exist all through the period of time between The Second and Third Temples. To a lesser extent they can apply to Pre-70 A.D. too, as students of the History know, and could continue into the 70th week also. But for Eschatological Doctrine building purposes this is defining of the Temple-less Diaspora period.

The account of the persecution is more like Luke's because it's defined as being Jewish in origin. But it does have a connection to Matthew's where it talks of the Gospel being preached to all nations. But Mark is saying not to worry for the Church can't be wiped out during this period because the Gospel must be preached to all nations and that hasn't happened yet. While Matthew says that at that time The Gospel will be Preached to all nations, and that is the last thing to happen before the Abomination of Desolation.

The timing distinction between the Non Signs and the Persecution that is so important to the Matthew-Luke distinction doesn't exist at all. As if in Mark this Persecution is during this period, not before or after.

After the Abomination of Desolation part it parallels Matthew's pretty well. But the core of my view of Mark 13 is in how the Abomination of Desolation is described differently in Mark. Matthew says it will happen in the Holy Place, in the Temple. But in Mark.

Mr 13:14 But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains:

"Where it ought not", is a pretty interesting distinction. Mark's, unlike every other reference, does not require The Temple to be standing for it to be literally fulfilled. Just an Abomination placed on that same land area.

I think we are dealing with a double fulfillment in this verse. I know your thinking "but the near fulfillment of the Abomination of Desolation was Antiochus Epiphanes, already in the past". Some times the multiple fulfillment doctrine has even more then just two. Every key detail of Jesus's First Advent had an OT foreshadowing, and some of the First Advent has a Second Repeat, mainly the Triumphal Entry.

Something that could be viewed as "close enough" was already in the past even in Daniel's time. King Manasseh of Judah, son of Hezekiah, placed Idols in The Temple.

I think the double fulfillment applies only to to the Abomination verse here. I don't see any future Christian persecutions being chiefly Jewish in origin, so what's before it here is the past. But what's after strongly matches Matthew too much for me to see it as different. So this Abomination is a jump forward point. Like how Daniel 8 jumps forward at Antiochus Epiphanes persecution, and Daniel 11:35 at the Maccabees victory.

I believe The Abomination of Desolation that is the near fulfillment here is The Equestrian Statue of Hadrian in the Jupiter Temple complex built over the Holy Mount after the Bar Kochba revolt was crushed. I discus that statue elsewhere, when I talk of my support for the Southern Conjecture or Al-Kas fountain view of The Temple's location.

The Bar Kochba revolt's importance to not just Jewish but Christian History is sadly overlooked. To me it's vital, and I also believe it was Bar Kochba not The Beast Yeshua meant in John 5:43 "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." Though I also consider that a verse not to build Doctrine on at all, least not Prophetic Doctrine, as the "if" makes it purely hypothetical. Like the imagined Psalm 83 War, or the hypothetical Assyrian attack in Micah 5.

What more people need to understand about the schism between Judaism and Christianity, is that it didn't simply go from bad to worse consistently from Stephen to Hitler.

The Jewish-Christian conflicts you see in Acts (and foretold in Luke 21) actually ceased after 70 A.D. Because the sects of Judaism most hostile to Christians, (Sadducees, Zelots, and Shammai following Pharisees) were completely wiped out in the 66-73 A.D. War. And the sect most tolerant of Christians, the Pharisees who followed Hillel The Elder (Hillel's grandson was the Gamaliel of Acts 4) became the sole surviving sect, until it eventually broke up among themselves. So from 75ish on into Hadrian's reign Christians and Jews not only got along, but were the same to outsiders, as historical references linked to Domitian's persecution of both demonstrates.

But in 132 A.D. Simon Bar Kochba started another Jewish revolt,in response to Hadrian's plans to built a Temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount. Christians might have been supportive, but because he proclaimed himself The Messiah, Christians were naturally not wiling to follow him. So he started a vicious persecution of Christians. And resentment towards this Persecution is what Christian Anti-Semitism was born from, we failed this time to follow the example of Stephen's dying words. "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."

I tend to agree with those Prophecy teachers who say that to some extend all of Israel's history has been laid out in advance by God. The Bar Kochba period is definitely of vital importance.

Perhaps to a lesser extent even what happens after the Abomination verse could have a type fulfillment in this period. Bar Kochba certainly was a False Christ(False Messiah) and the Rabbi who wrote the Sedar Olam to try and make the 70 week Prophecy point to him was indeed a False Prophet and/or False Teacher. And them in Judea did flee, many scholars consider this the real beginning of the Diaspora rather then 70 A.D. Indeed in 70 A.D. it was mostly Jews being taken as slaves to Rome, which Luke's Discourse references but not Mark, Hadrian kicked all the Jews out of Jerusalem, and many out of Judea.

Do the three different contexts color the differences in how the Non Signs are expressed? I will address only one. Contrary to what the many Translations say, the Greek text used Christos after "Many shall come in my name, saying, I am....." only in Matthew.

First though does the "in my name" really mean literally claiming to be Jesus? Not really, it can just mean someone usurping his status. Revelation 19 says both "and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself." and "And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS."

You might at first think this usage of the word Christ/Messiah is the opposite of what you'd expect. The two in the contexts of Jewish in origin persecution, and Jewish revolts that involved Messianic claimants. But I think the key is who's being warned not to be deceived. Matthew the most has a Jewish context in mind. While the other two are for more general predominantly Gentile Christians, they weren't vulnerable to thinking Bar Kochba was The Messiah.

Luke's is the one taught publicly because that was the one nearest to be fulfilled, the word needed to spread fast. Matthew and Mark quickly wrote down what future generations needed to know.

Matthew's was heard by all 12 Disciples, so Matthew was again recording something he was an eye witness too, he tends to write down the longest speeches, being trained in short hand as a Roman customs official gave him an advantage there. I believe the statements of the Early Fathers that Mark was writing down what Peter preached in the 40s A.D. is correct, and has possible Biblical support in Peter's referring to Mark in his Epistle. I also believe subtleties of the text in Acts 13 imply Mark's Gospel was already written by the time those events took place. So we have Peter's eye witness account in Mark 13.