13:1 This discourse evidently followed Jesus' departure from the temple on Wednesday with His disciples. The stones that caught the disciple's eye were probably those above the floor of the temple courtyard. Herod the Great had enlarged the temple esplanade and supported it with huge foundation stones. At the southeast corner, the temple complex rose about 200 feet above the Kidron Valley below. Some of these stones are still in place. In view of what Jesus predicted and what happened, the disciples apparently referred to the stones of the buildings and porches, not the foundation stones. The colonnades that surrounded the temple courtyard were also very beautiful. The whole temple complex was magnificent.307Mark probably called attention to the stones in view of what Jesus would say about them (v. 2).
13:2 Jesus predicted the complete destruction of the temple buildings (cf. Jer 7:11-14). This happened in 70 A.D. when Titus the Roman destroyed the city of Jerusalem. He razed the buildings and porches on the temple esplanade so thoroughly that no trace of them remains today. Not even their exact location on the temple mount is certain.
"Up to this point during this day, Jesus had acted as God's Forthteller, applying the truth of God to the scene before Him; with this statement, He turned to predictive prophecy, declaring the near future."308
However this prophecy has not yet attained complete fulfillment. There are still many stones still standing on one another in the temple complex, specifically in its foundations. What Jesus proceeded to predict shows that complete fulfillment would not come until the future (i.e., the Tribulation).
13:3-4 Evidently the disciples pondered Jesus' prophecy as they crossed the Kidron Valley that separated the temple complex from Mt. Olivet to the east. When they sat down on the mountain and looked west into the temple courtyard, Jesus' first four disciples (1:16-20) asked two questions.
The first question dealt with the time of the temple's destruction. Matthew's account shows that their second question had two parts. They asked what the sign of Jesus' coming and of the end of the present age would be. Mark combined these two parts into one simple question about the sign of "all these things"being fulfilled. The disciples viewed the destruction of the temple and the end of the present age as occurring together. In His answer Jesus taught them that these events would not happen at the same time. Again a question from the disciples led to a teaching session (cf. 4:10-32; 7:17-23; 9:11-13, 28-29; 10:10-12).
