Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Jesus prophesies a future of suffering
15-22 “When the time comes, then, that you see the ‘abomination of desolation’ prophesied by Daniel ‘standing in the sacred place’—the reader should note this—then is the time for those in Judea to escape to the hills. A man on his house-top must not waste time going into his house to collect anything; a man at work in the fields must not go back home to fetch his clothes. Alas for the pregnant, alas for those with tiny babies at that time! Pray God that you may not have to make your escape in the winter or on the Sabbath day, for then there will be great misery, such as has never happened from the beginning of the world until now, and will never happen again! Yes, if those days had not been cut short no human being would survive. But for the sake of God’s people those days are to be shortened.
23-28 “If anyone says to you then, ‘Look, here is Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ don’t believe it. False christs and false prophets are going to appear and will produce great signs and wonders to mislead, if it were possible, even God’s own people. Listen, I am warning you. So that if people say to you, ‘There he is, in the desert!’ you are not to go out there. If they say, ‘Here he is, in this inner room!’ don’t believe it. For as lightning flashes across from east to west so will the Son of Man’s coming be. ‘Wherever there is a dead body, there the vultures will flock.’
At the end of time the Son of Man will return
29-31 “Immediately after the misery of those days ‘the sun will be darkened, the moon will fail to give her light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of heaven will be shaken’. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will wring their hands as they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky in power and great splendour. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet-call and they will gather his chosen from the four winds—from one end of the heavens to the other.
The New Testament in Modern English by J.B Phillips copyright © 1960, 1972 J. B. Phillips. Administered by The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. Used by Permission.