Summer Is Nigh

The Question at the Stones

The parable of the fig tree does not begin at the fig tree. It begins at the temple door. As Yahushua went out of the temple, one of His disciples pointed at the building.

And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here! And Yahushua answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. — Mark 13:1–2

He then sat on the mount of Olives, over against the temple. Peter, James, John, and Andrew came to Him privately and asked one thing two ways: when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled (Mark 13:3–4). Both halves of the question are about the stones. Nothing else was asked.

Luke records the same two-part question (Luke 21:7). Matthew alone adds a third clause, the sign of His coming and of the end of the world (Matthew 24:3). The word rendered world there is aion, the age, not kosmos, the world. Even in Matthew, the disciples were asking when an age would close, and the age they knew was the age of that house.

The common teaching that splits Matthew’s questions into a present, a near future, and a far future, and then files the fig tree in the far future, has no ground in Mark at all.

Mark carries one question, and it is about a building.

The question governs the answer. Every word Yahushua spoke from Mark 13:5 to the fig tree answers a question about stones coming down. The audience governs the hearing. Four men sat on a hill looking at the temple. When He said “ye,” He was speaking to them.

The fig tree answers when the temple falls.

The Tree They Had Already Seen

These four men had seen a fig tree before this one. Days earlier, on the road into Jerusalem, Yahushua went to a fig tree in full leaf.

And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. And Yahushua answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it. — Mark 11:13–14

What He did next is the key to the whole chapter. He went into the temple, drove out those who bought and sold, and said the house of prayer had been made a den of thieves (Mark 11:15–17). The next morning the disciples passed the same tree and found it dried up from the roots (Mark 11:20). Mark sets the temple between the two halves of the fig tree. The tree and the house are one story.

The tree had leaves, and leaves announced fruit. That is why He went to it in a season when the full crop was not yet due. It held out a promise from a distance and had nothing under the promise when He came close.

The disciples did not need the image explained. The Prophets had already put a fig tree, a house, and a dried root in one place. Hosea records that Yahuah found Israel like grapes in the wilderness and saw their fathers as the firstripe in the fig tree at her first time (Hosea 9:10). A few verses on, the same chapter closes:

For the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters. Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit. — Hosea 9:15–16

Driven out of the house. Root dried up. No fruit. Hosea set down the order of Mark 11 centuries before it happened. Jeremiah said it the same way: no figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade (Jeremiah 8:13). Micah grieved that there was no firstripe fruit to eat, and then named what was missing: the good man was perished out of the earth, and there was none upright among men (Micah 7:1–2).

Before the image is applied, Scripture defines what a tree is. In the Hebrew Scriptures a tree is a man. The man who trusts in Yahuah shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and shall not cease from yielding fruit (Jeremiah 17:7–8). The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree and still bring forth fruit in old age (Psalm 92:12–14). Yahuah calls His restored people trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahuah (Isaiah 61:3). Ezekiel speaks of all the trees of the field watching Yahuah bring down the high tree and dry up the green tree (Ezekiel 17:24), and the trees there are kings and peoples. Jotham told the men of Shechem a whole parable in which the trees are men choosing a king (Judges 9:7–15). A fig tree is not a flag for a nation. It is a planting of men, and Yahuah comes to men for fruit.

Scripture also defines the fruit, and it defines it as righteousness. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life (Proverbs 11:30). Isaiah’s vineyard was planted for judgment and righteousness, and when Yahuah came looking for both He found oppression and a cry (Isaiah 5:7). Amos charged Israel with turning the fruit of righteousness into hemlock (Amos 6:12). Hosea told the same people to sow in righteousness, and said they had plowed wickedness and eaten the fruit of lies (Hosea 10:12–13). Moses then says what righteousness is. He spoke to a people Yahuah had already brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand (Deuteronomy 6:21), and told them:

And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before Yahuah our God, as he hath commanded us. — Deuteronomy 6:25

David said it in one line: all thy commandments are righteousness (Psalm 119:172). The fruit is righteousness, and righteousness is the commandments kept by a people already delivered. The fruit is the law walked out in a man’s life. Psalm 1 puts the two together: the man whose delight is in the law of Yahuah is a tree that brings forth his fruit in his season (Psalm 1:2–3).

A tree in leaf with no fruit is a people showing every outward sign of a harvest with no keeping of the law beneath it. That was the house the four men were looking at: sacrifices running, courts full, priests at their stations, and no fruit.

The fig tree is a planting of men, its fruit is righteousness, the law kept, and the leaves without fruit are the temple service carried on without it.

Summer Is the End

On the mount of Olives, facing that house, Yahushua gave the parable.

Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near: So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. — Mark 13:28–31

The likeness is to the whole scene, not to the tree alone. A man sees the branch go tender and the leaves come out, and he knows what season follows. The leaves are not the lesson. The season is.

The season named is summer, and the Prophets had already said what summer means for Israel. Yahuah showed Amos a basket of summer fruit and asked him what he saw.

And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said Yahuah unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. — Amos 8:2

The word for summer fruit is qayits (H7019). The word for end is qets (H7093). The two sound almost alike, and Yahuah made His point with the sound itself: summer fruit, the end. This is not a meaning laid on Amos from outside. It is the answer Amos was given when he was asked what he saw.

Jeremiah carried the same season to the same people, in the same chapter as the leafless fig: the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved (Jeremiah 8:20). In both prophets, summer is not a time of blessing for an unfruitful people. It is the time their end arrives.

When Yahushua told four men watching the temple that summer was near, He was speaking the language of Amos. Summer is the end come upon the people. When they saw these things come to pass, the end of that house was standing at the doors.

In the Prophets summer is not a revival; summer is the end.

What the Pulpit Planted in 1948

Popular prophecy teaching reads the parable another way. It makes the fig tree the modern state of Israel, the budding its founding in 1948, and “this generation” the people alive to see it. Prophecy books of the 1970s and 1980s counted a generation of forty years from 1948 and set the Messiah’s return near 1988. The year came and went, and the reading was quietly stretched rather than given up.

The reading breaks the question first. The disciples asked when the stones in front of them would fall. A state founded nineteen centuries later answers nothing they asked.

It breaks the audience second. Yahushua said, when ye shall see these things. The men in front of Him were the ones told to watch, and they were the ones who would see.

It breaks the season third. The pulpit makes the budding a blessing on a restored nation. In Amos and Jeremiah, summer is the end come upon the people, not their restoration. The modern reading takes the sign of a house’s end and preaches it as the sign of a house’s return.

It breaks Luke fourth. Luke records Him saying, behold the fig tree, and all the trees (Luke 21:29). If any tree in leaf tells the season, the lesson cannot be a coded prophecy about one nation. It is how any man reads summer coming from the leaves.

The generation is settled by the same speaker in the same week. In the temple, before He walked out of it, Yahushua said all the righteous blood shed upon the earth would come upon this generation, and told that house it was left desolate (Matthew 23:35–38). “This generation” in His mouth that week meant the men standing in front of Him. Before that generation had passed, in the year 70, the temple was burned and its stones thrown down, one from another, as He said.

This generation means the generation that heard it.

All These Things, the Clouds Included

The strongest objection sits inside the chapter. Among the things that generation would see, Yahushua named the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory (Mark 13:26). If that is His return to the earth, then “this generation” cannot mean the men on the hill, because they died and He had not returned.

The answer is in the passage He was quoting. The clouds come from Daniel.

I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. — Daniel 7:13–14

Daniel saw the Son of man come with the clouds to the Ancient of days. The direction is upward, into the presence of Yahuah, not downward to the earth. He comes to be given dominion and a kingdom. That is an enthronement, not a landing. Daniel also says that dominion shall not pass away, the same words Yahushua set against the passing of heaven and earth at the close of the parable.

Yahushua said the same to the high priest at His trial: ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven (Mark 14:62). He said “ye” to the high priest of that generation. The kingdom was given when He was lifted up at the tree, and a cloud received Him out of the disciples’ sight as He went up to the Ancient of days (Acts 1:9). The men on the hill saw it. The high priest who judged Him lived in the generation that saw the house he served thrown down.

The darkened sun and falling stars of the same passage are the Prophets’ language for the fall of a house or a nation, not for the end of the physical sky. Isaiah used those words for the fall of Babylon (Isaiah 13:10, 19).

The clouds of Mark 13:26 carry the Son of man up to the throne, and that generation saw Him take it.

That Day and That Hour

The parable ends at verse 31. At verse 32 Yahushua turns.

But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. — Mark 13:32

Up to this point He had answered the question asked, with signs, a season, and a generation. Here He speaks of a day with no sign, no season, and no generation attached. “These things” were known by signs and could be read like leaves. “That day” is known to the Father alone and cannot be read at all. The two are not the same event. The fall of the house was near. The day of His return, when He ends death and holds the final judgment, was not given to anyone to count toward. That keeps the return future and whole, and keeps the parable where its own question put it.

The verse corrects one more teaching in passing. The Son said He did not know what the Father knew, which no co-equal person of a single Godhead could say.

Mark then gives one more short telling: a man taking a far journey, leaving his servants their work and commanding the porter to watch (Mark 13:34–37). That telling belongs to the day no man knows. The fig tree belongs to the summer that four men were told they would see.

The summer was read from the leaves; the day is read from nothing and can only be watched for.

Stones That Fall, Words That Stand

The parable closes on a contrast Yahushua drew Himself: heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. The disciples began by admiring stones. He ended by naming the one thing that does not fall. Isaiah had said it: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand for ever (Isaiah 40:8).

The house fell because it bore leaves and no fruit. It kept the outward service and left the law unkept, and the law is the light (Proverbs 6:23; Isaiah 8:20). A house in full leaf with no light in it had already reached its summer.

Yahuah’s search for fruit did not end with the stones, because He never dwelt in stones for their own sake. He said, let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them (Exodus 25:8). When one house came down, Peter wrote to the people who had become the house: ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5). The stones that would not stay one upon another gave way to living stones that do.

The warning carries over whole. A people delivered by the Messiah and planted again is still a fig tree, and Yahuah still comes to it looking for fruit. Leaves are not fruit. A full building, a busy calendar of services, and a name for being alive are the same leaves the temple carried. The fruit is what Psalm 1 says it is: the law delighted in and kept, brought forth in its season. A tree that meets Him with leaves has already been told what summer means.

The budding fig tree announced the end of a house that bore leaves without the fruit of the law; that generation saw it, and the words that judged it stand over every tree Yahuah has planted since.