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How could there possibly be two "end of times" separated by 1300 years? If the world was literally destroyed in 592-570 BC, how could there be another end to the world? Why are people not repeatedly informed by the man in the pulpit that, by the end of the time, the end of Judaic dispensation was intended and not the world? Are they not afraid of God?

Eze 7:6 - An end is coming; the end has come! It has awakened against you; behold, it has come!

Matt 24:14 - And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed in the whole earth, for a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come.

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    People in the Old Testament times possibly didn't know that the earth is round and not infinite. If so, their thinking would have been locally bound. and "the end" to them would have been similar to what happened to Sodom. Thus, there would be many local "ends", a few regional "ends", and one final global "end".
    – Constantthin
    Commented Feb 2 at 3:58
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    @Constantthin: Folks around the Mediterranean knew that the earth was round by at latest 300 BC; see this article for a summary. You're right that it's not clear whether the Old Testament authors knew any of this, but their Phoenician neighbors likely did; it would be hard to sail a sea as large as the Mediterranean without noticing!
    – Corbin
    Commented Feb 2 at 18:08
  • @Corbin Is it obvious that a round world is the explanation for things disappearing over the horizon without a telescope? I've never been to sea, so I'm not sure if a naked eye can distinguish "getting smaller and smaller" from "sailing over the horizon".
    – chepner
    Commented Feb 2 at 19:15
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    @chepner: Spherical excess has been known since the earliest days of surveying, and was accounted for during the construction of e.g. Egyptian pyramids prior to 2000 BC. It isn't possible to sail across a sea the size of the Mediterranean without surveying and triangulation techniques that show curved paths across long distances.
    – Corbin
    Commented Feb 2 at 19:38
  • @Corbin. Sure, a small minority of scientifically minded people might have guessed it, but the average man most likely hadn’t. The notion about a round earth then would have been similar to Einsteins theory about relativity today. How many people really know how that works? I don’t. I think it is ridiculous. To make things worse, there are still people around today that believes that the earth is flat :)
    – Constantthin
    Commented Feb 3 at 0:52

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The context is the key, which is explicitly listed for each text;

Ezekiel 7:6

Nebuchadnezzar conducted three sperate campaigns against Jerusalem:

  1. The first in 605 BC when Daniel was taken captive along with many of the nobility
  2. The second in 597 BC when Ezekiel was taken captive along with about 10,000 captives
  3. The third campaign concluded in 586 BC when Zedekiah's sons were killed, the temple destroyed, Jerusalem was burned to the ground and most of the inhabitants deported

In Eze 7, we read the context of the prophecy in V1 & 2:

And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “O son of man, this is what the Lord GOD says to the land of Israel:

That is, Ezekiel was predicting the (temporary) end of the state of Israel and its monarchy. This prophecy was fulfilled by Nebuchadnezzar's third campaign.

Matthew 24:14

Again, the context of Jesus' prophecy in Matt 24 is explicitly stated in V1-3

As Jesus left the temple and was walking away, His disciples came up to Him to point out its buildings.

“Do you see all these things?” He replied. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

While Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will these things [temple destroyed] happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?”

That is, Jesus' prophecy in Matt 24 concerns two events:

  • the destruction of the temple & Jerusalem, the destruction of the Jewish state, the loss of the Jewish polity, etc, which concluded/was fulfilled in 70 AD
  • the second coming of Jesus and the end of the age/world which is yet to occur.
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  • @ Dottard - This answer is accurate in the main! Until the last sentence. The disciples made a false assumption that Jesus was talking about the "End of the World" and so used, syntelias (final completion of all together, vs. 3). But in the verse under discussion in this question, Jesus used a different word, telos, (a simple ending of an age, the Second Temple age, vs. 14). Thank you for your input and research.
    – ray grant
    Commented Feb 5 at 22:25
  • @raygrant - I completely agree that in the disciples' minds the destruction of the temple and the end of the age were interchangeable terms. However, we now know that was not the case.
    – Dottard
    Commented Feb 5 at 23:20
  • Football fans don't have much trouble distinguishing between the end of a play, the end of a quarter, the end of a half, the end of the game, and the end of the season. Similarly, there are biblical ages that come to an end. Think about this question: Does the world end after the end of the 1,000 year millennium?
    – Dieter
    Commented Feb 8 at 18:23
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There is only one scripture in the Bible that speaks of the end of time. It is in Revelation 10:6:

"And [the angel] sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer." A.V.

That is part of a prophetic vision seen by the apostle John, which has not yet happened. There will only be one end of time, which will involve not only the planet we live on, but heaven as well. It still lies in the future.

The reference you made to Ezekiel 7:4 has got nothing to do with the end of time.

The reference you made to Matthew 24:14 does not speak of the end of time either.

To make the claim that "everybody knows that the world was literally destroyed in 592-570 BC" is false. I've sat through thousands of Christian sermons and read millions of words in Christian theology literature, without once being told that "the world was literally destroyed in 592-570 BC". Needless to say, no source is cited for that absurd claim. The phrase "the end" pops up many times in the Bible, but only once is it speaking of the (still future) end of time. Apart from that, it refers to governments, eras, cities, and so on; not this planet, literally.

To post questions on this hermeneutics site requires study of the matter being raised, to show that the premise is reasonable, and it also requires attention to consistency of words used. To start off by speaking of the end of time without a single scripture quoted that uses that phraseology means it's time for a fresh question to be asked, one that quotes the only verse in the Bible that uses that phrase, I would suggest.

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Context Means Everything Ezekiel was living during the tumultuous times when the end of the first Temple era was at hand. The corruption of Israel was beyond redemption and God was using the foreign nations from the North and East of Israel to destroy it, as per the warning of Deuteronomy 28. Hence the exclamation, The End, the End.

[The ancient prophet is not speaking of the "End of the whole world." The comments on your question concerning science are off on a rabbit trail.]

End of the Second Temple Era Just as the first verse mentioned dealt with an end of a specific time in Jewish history, so also, second verse dealt with an end of another Jewish section of time: the Second Temple Era.

Note that the disciples made a mistake in their questioning. They thought that the destruction of the grand Temple could only be accomplished by something so tragic as the "end of the world." (Gk., syntelias tou aionos, "the total completion of the world/age", vs. 3)

However, when Jesus explained what He meant by the Destruction of the buildings of the Temple complex, He used a different wording than the disciples: "end of the age" (ezei to telos, "coming to an end", vs. 14) There was to be a simple End of a Jewish Age, not the End of the World. A "telos", not a "syntelias".

Proof of Interpretation To show that this is the right interpretation we have Jesus's word on it:

Verily I say to you, in no wise will this generation have passed away until all these things shall have taken place. (Matthew 24:34; see also 23:36)

Every thing mentioned was to take place in that first century generation; that is, the horrific destruction of all Judea, culminating in the surrender of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. This was the ending of an Age in Jewish history.

Fear God As you mentioned, many pastors teach otherwise. It should be considered that it is not because they don't fear God. Most are righteous dudes who try to carry out their ministry for the edifying of the Church. The problem lies in the plethora of teachers in seminaries and in the Church who merely repeat the teaching of John Darby and his erroneous take on the Jewish prophecies that he said was based on a wall of separation between Jew and Gentile. Their continual teaching of this has been a great influence on how pastors preach. This, of course, flies in the face of tons of scriptures that announced that there was no longer any difference since the work of the Cross. (Ephesians 2:11-22!)

End of the World There indeed will be an End of the World in the future. But when it happens we won't be sitting here discussing it! It will be the completion of all things concerning the entire World!

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