>>17867455 (OP)In St. Matthew's version of the Olivet Discourse, three separate questions are posed to the Good Sheperd:
>“Tell us,” they said,>(1) “when will [the Temple be destroyed], >(2) and what will be the sign of [Jesus'] coming >(3) and of the end of the age?”And Jesus responds seemingly to all three with verses 4 through 35 in the same chapter 24, which ends with the famous verse in 34, "Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened."
But immediately after these verses he follows in verse 36 with:
>But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.And continues with several parables about final judgment with an emphasis on "not knowing the day or the hour."
It is clear that Jesus is replying in verse 36 to a different question than to what the immediately preceding verses are replying. And the emphasis on no man knowing the day or hour of his coming flatly contradicts the very specific prediction of the destruction of the Temple, meaning Jesus wasn't predicting the end of the world with the destruction of the Temple. Rather, Jesus Christ, being God, in a wise ambiguity suggests with the parables that follow, that though the end of the world may not soon come to humanity as a whole, it will soon come to individual humans, and especially to individual Christians, so that the proper attitude toward this question should be one of vigilance and preparedness. That is exactly what, for example, The Parable of the Ten Virgins stresses.