Mark 13:24-30

At this point in his great discourse, Jesus turned to the period following the fall of Jerusalem as said, But in those days, following that distress, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light. (Mark 13:24)

This era was something that the generation to which Jesus was speaking would certainly witness, at least in part (Mark 13:30). During that era, which is our present age, Jesus would come with poer. The new movement that he came to establish, the Kingdom of God among men, which in that day numbered only a comparatively few believers, would become a mighty Army of God which would ge gathered from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens. (Mark 13:27)

If the description of the natural disturbances in the earth and in the heavens, described in Mark 13:24-25, seems to make the foregoing interpretation unlikely, it should be remembered that these verses are quite similar to the words of Peter on the day of Pentecost (quoted from the prophet Joel), which Peter interpreted figuratively to describe the advent of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of the gospel era (Acts 2:16-20). So interpreted, they seem to imply God's dramatic interference in the affairs of men and of nations through the power of the living Christ and by the work of the Holy Spirit.