2. (a) Why do Bible commentators admit of difficulty in understanding or applying Jesus’ prophecy? (b) What does A. Plummer say regarding Luke 21:22?

² It is admitted by well-known Bible commentators of Christendom that Jesus’ prophecy is at times difficult to understand or apply. He gave it in answer to a question of three parts, namely, about when the destruction of Jerusalem and her temple would be and about the sign of his “presence” and of the “conclusion of the system of things.” (Matt. 24:3) These commentators admit that, in Jesus’ prophetic answer to all three parts of the question, it is sometimes hard to grasp whether he is referring to one or the other feature.a For example, with reference to Jesus’ words in Luke 21:22, “These are days for meting out justice, that all the things written may be fulfilled,” the author and Bible commentator A. Plummer makes this suggestion: “The reference, therefore, is to the destruction of Jerusalem regarded as a type of the end of the world.”b

3. Evidently, in speaking of Jerusalem and of the system of things, what would Jesus have in mind in order for Matthew 24:21, 22 to be true?

³ Very evidently, in all good reason, when Jesus tells of the time that “these things” would be and also what would be the sign of the “conclusion of the system of things,” Jesus had in mind something immensely bigger than what the inquiring apostles had in mind. He used doomed unfaithful Jerusalem of his day as a type, and so he had in mind the antitypical unfaithful Jerusalem, namely, Christendom, and he also had in mind a system of things larger than that of the Jewish system built around Jerusalem and her temple. Hence Jesus could say, without exaggeration: “Then there will be great tribulation such as has not occurred since the world’s beginning until now, no, nor will occur again. In fact, unless those days were cut short, no flesh would be saved; but on account of the chosen ones those days will be cut short.” (Matt. 24:21, 22) The terrible destruction of antitypical unfaithful Jerusalem, Christendom, is part of the calamitous end of this present worldwide “system of things,” commonly spoken of as “the end of the world.”​—Matt. 24:3, AV; AS.