Mark 13:5–27

⁵Jesus said to them, “Be on guard, and don’t let anyone deceive you. ⁶Many men, claiming to speak for me, will come and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will deceive many people. ⁷And don’t be troubled when you hear the noise of battles close by and news of battles far away. Such things must happen, but they do not mean that the end has come. ⁸Countries will fight each other; kingdoms will attack one another. There will be earthquakes everywhere, and there will be famines. These things are like the first pains of childbirth.

^9*“You yourselves must be on guard. You will be arrested and taken to court. You will be beaten in the synagogues; you will stand before rulers and kings for my sake to tell them the Good News. ^10*But before the end comes, the gospel must be preached to all peoples. ^11*And when you are arrested and taken to court, do not worry beforehand about what you are going to say; when the time comes, say whatever is then given to you. For the words you speak will not be yours; they will come from the Holy Spirit. ¹²Men will hand over their own brothers to be put to death, and fathers will do the same to their children. Children will turn against their parents and have them put to death. ^13*Everyone will hate you because of me. But whoever holds out to the end will be saved.

The Awful Horror

^14*“You will see ‘The Awful Horror’ standing in the place where he should not be.” (Note to the reader: be sure to understand what this means!) “Then those who are in Judea must run away to the hills. ^15*Someone who is on the roof of his house must not lose time by going down into the house to get anything to take with him. ^16*Someone who is in the field must not go back to the house for his cloak. ¹⁷How terrible it will be in those days for women who are pregnant and for mothers with little babies! ¹⁸Pray to God that these things will not happen in the winter! ^19*For the trouble of those days will be far worse than any the world has ever known from the very beginning when God created the world until the present time. Nor will there ever be anything like it again. ²⁰But the Lord has reduced the number of those days; if he had not, nobody would survive. For the sake of his chosen people, however, he has reduced those days.

²¹“Then, if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’—do not believe him. ²²For false Messiahs and false prophets will appear. They will perform miracles and wonders in order to deceive even God’s chosen people, if possible. ²³Be on your guard! I have told you everything before the time comes.

The Coming of the Son of Man

^24*“In the days after that time of trouble the sun will grow dark, the moon will no longer shine, ^25*the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers in space will be driven from their courses. ^26*Then the Son of Man will appear, coming in the clouds with great power and glory. ²⁷He will send the angels out to the four corners of the earth to gather God’s chosen people from one end of the world to the other.