And as He was going out of the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, “Teacher, behold what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!”

And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone shall be left upon another which will not be torn down.” – Mark 13:1,2 (NASV)

The hyperbolic figure “not one stone upon another” spelled the totality of the predicted destruction.

As to the fulfilment, when the Jews rebelled against the Romans, Jerusalem was taken by Titus, son of the emperor Vespasian (A.D. 69-79). The temple was destroyed. It is believed that more than a million Jews, who had crowded into the city, perished. As a political unit Israel ceased to exist. As a nation specially favored by the Lord it had reached the end of the road even long before the beginning of the Jewish War.

An ex-combatant and eye-witness, Josephus, almost immediately after the struggle between the Jews and the Romans had ended, began to write his History of the Jewish War. On the whole his narrative may be described as trustworthy, although a definitely pro-Roman bias cannot be denied. Of the seven “books” into which this work is divided one should read especially books IV-VI. A few excerpts from Josephus may illumine the fulfilment of Mark 13:2 (cf. Matt. 22:7; Matt. 24:2; Luke 21:6, Luke 21:20-24), and thus also the passage itself:

“That building [the temple at Jerusalem], however, God long ago had sentenced to the flames; but now in the revolution of the time-periods the fateful day had arrived, the tenth of the month Lous, the very day on which previously it had been burned by the king of Babylon… One of the soldiers, neither awaiting orders nor filled with horror of so dread an undertaking, but moved by some supernatural impulse, snatched a brand from the blazing timber and, hoisted up by one of his fellow soldiers, flung the fiery missile through a golden window… When the flame rose, a scream, as poignant as the tragedy, went up from the Jews … now that the object which before they had guarded so closely was going to ruin” (VI.250-253).

“While the sanctuary was burning … neither pity for age nor respect for rank was shown; on the contrary, children and old people, laity and priests alike were massacred” (VI.271).

“The emperor ordered the entire city and sanctuary to be razed to the ground, except only the highest towers, Phasael, Hippicus, and Mariamne, and that part of the wall that enclosed the city on the west… All the rest of the wall that surrounded the city was so completely razed to the ground as to leave future visitors to the spot no reason to believe that it had ever been inhabited” (VII.1-3).

In addition to Josephus see also the vivid description of The Revolt and its results, in T. Kollek and M. Pearlman, op. cit., pp. 125-135.

Mark 13:3-4. And as he was sitting on the Mount of Olives facing the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew were asking him privately, Tell us, when will this happen, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished? The variety in the reporting is again clear. All three inform the reader that there were those who asked Jesus a question. They asked it “privately,” away from the crowd. Luke merely states, “They” asked, obviously referring to the disciples. Matthew has, “The disciples came to him privately, saying [or: asking] …” Mark mentions the very names of the disciples who took the lead in asking the question. They were the three—Peter, James, and John—who are seen together on more than one occasion (Mark 5:37; Mark 9:2; Mark 14:33), plus Andrew, Peter’s brother (Mark 1:16), the one who had brought Peter (=Simon) to Christ (John 1:40-42).

Also, Mark here as often is the most descriptive. He not only states, as does Matthew, that Jesus and his disciples were sitting on the Mount of Olives, but adds the little touch, “facing the temple.”

Sitting there, we can imagine how, looking across the valley, a truly fascinating view disclosed itself to the eyes of the little company. There was the roof of the temple bathed in a sea of golden glory. There were those beautiful terraced courts and also those cloisters of snowy marble which seemed to shine and sparkle in the light of the setting sun. And then to think that all this glory was about to perish! The minds of the disciples reeled and staggered when they pondered that mysterious and awesome prediction.

- William Hendriksen, commentary on Mark 13:1-3

“It is greatly to be regretted that those who, in our day, give themselves to the study and exposition of prophecy, seem not to be aware of the immense significance of the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, which was accompanied by the extinction of Jewish national existence, and the dispersion of the Jewish people among all the nations. The failure to recognize the significance of that event, and the vast amount of prophecy which it fulfilled, has been the cause of great confusion, for the necessary consequence of missing the past fulfilment of predicted events is to leave on our hands a mass of prophecies for which we must needs contrive fulfilments in the future. The harmful results are two fold; for first, we are thus deprived of the evidential value, and the support to the faith, of those remarkable fulfilments of prophecy which are so clearly presented to us in authentic contemporary histories; and second, our vision of things to come is greatly obscured and confused by the transference to the future of predicted events which, in fact, have already happened, and whereof complete records have been preserved for our information.”

“Yet, in the face of all this, we have today a widely held scheme of prophetic interpretation, which has for its very cornerstone the idea that, when God’s time to remember His promised mercies to Israel shall at last have come, He will gather them into their ancient land again, only to pour upon them calamities and distresses far exceeding even the horrors which attended the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. This is, we are convinced, an error of such magnitude as to derange the whole program of unfulfilled prophecy.”

- Phillip Mauro on the significance of A.D. 70