What does Mark 13:8 mean?
"Nation" is from the Greek root word ethnos and means a group of people who are associated by some shared characteristic, whether geographical or familial or tribal. Paul uses the term in his letters to identify Gentiles in general (Romans 2:14, 24; 3:29). "Kingdom" is from the Greek root word basileia, and has more of a formal, political meaning. It is the territory and people ruled over by a specific leader, particularly a monarch. In simplified, modern terms, with basileia, Jesus prophesies formal wars, and with ethnos, He warns us of what modern people might define as "terrorists."The world has seen truly dramatic earthquakes. In 1556, 830,000 people in China died via an earthquake. In 2004, 230,000 people from Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and India died in an earthquake and the resulting tsunami. If these are "normal" natural disasters, we can imagine how catastrophic earthquakes might become leading up to the end times.
Luke 21:11 adds that there will be "famines and pestilences…terrors and great signs from heaven." Millions of people have died from famines since Jesus' warning, including 25 million in the 6th century Plague of Justinian, 50 million from the Black Death in the 14th century, and 15 million in China and India in the early 20th century. Like the earthquakes, we have not yet seen what horrific damage famines and pestilences will wreak as we approach the tribulation. Revelation depicts events which kill a fourth or a third of the living people on earth (Revelation 6:8), including natural disasters which inspire even the rich and powerful to despair (Revelation 6:12–17), leading most to believe that actual end-times events will be catastrophic beyond what we have seen thus far in history.
The last phrase spoken here is both depressing and inspiring. When we experience warfare, natural disasters, and famine, we need to remember that it is not time, yet. We must be patient and have endurance to run the race (Hebrews 12:1). Such events give us a chance to show God's love to others, but we should not necessarily expect to be rescued in the midst of them. Jesus is coming, but not necessarily right now, even when we're experiencing suffering.
Preterists and semi-preterists teach that the prophecies in Mark 13 were mostly fulfilled by the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. This verse adds a complication to those claims. Between Jesus' teaching around AD 30 and the destruction of Jerusalem, there weren't wars, rumors of wars (Mark 13:7), earthquakes, and famines on the scale described in books like Revelation. We need to remember that despite the number of wars and natural disasters we experience today, when the end times truly approach it will be much, much worse.
