We have a long way to travel on our journey through the various Scriptures in order to come to a settled place of understanding and we will need patience. In these previous posts I have urged caution about trying to make (Old Testament) Scriptures fit into the world that we know. They were written into a context; they were not written to us. The nature of the prophecies are not to be understood as simple predictions but as promise that are expressed within their world; the fulfilments of those promises will exceed the literal words.We exercise caution as we read the text and must allow the New Testament to be the lens through which we read Old Testament texts of hope. All the promises are in Jesus, and it is for this reason that the first eschatological event, the first horizon is the crucifixion.
The second horizon, the events that take place some 40 years later will be where the focus of the writings go.
Patience, and allowing the Bible to be there for us, while acknowledging it was not written to us. The words of Jesus (Matt. 24; Luke 21 & Mark 13) were spoken around 30AD and were deeply impactful for those people.