When is the end?

One of the issues that this passage raises for me is that of timing.

Is this describing the events of the Second Coming of Christ, which is yet future from us now, or is this describing the events of 70 A. D.?

Apocalyptic language is much slippier than we often realize. We tend to read apocalyptic phrases in a way that makes them concrete and that is just not the way that they were understood. Add to that, this passage is a parable and not a concrete description of the event.

If the Bible is the best interpreter of the Bible, then we can look to the Bible for the methodology that we need to understand the Bible.

What are the phrases that make this passage tough? The key phrase “you don’t know the day or the hour” seems to be the central point of this parable. But day and hour of what? We have to go to the wider context to see what Jesus is talking about.

The scene appears to be judgment:

Mat 25:31 “But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.
Mat 25:32 “All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;
Mat 25:33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.
Mat 25:34 “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
…
Mat 25:41 “Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;
…
Mat 25:46 “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

This is frequently read as a description of the judgment at the end of time. Particularly taken the phrases “eternal fire” and “eternal punishment”.

There is another possible way of viewing these passages, though. They could describe the judgment on Jerusalem in 70 AD. This was taken by the early Christians as proof that Jesus was on the throne, just as the book of Daniel had described.