Olivet Discourse - Matt 24:1-12; Mark 13:1-6; Luke 21:5-8; JS-M 1:1-10

This next part is unique in that Jesus’ teachings here weren’t just recorded in several of the gospels, but in the Joseph Smith Translation there is such an extensive addition that there was an entire chapter that was retranslated and added into the Pearl of Great Price as “Joseph Smith-Matthew 1.” Needless to say there is a lot of information here and it deals with topics that are already abstract and difficult to understand. Jesus leaves those he’s teaching in Jerusalem with a sort of “this is your last chance” statement saying, “For I say unto you, that ye shall not see me henceforth and know that I am he of whom it is written by the prophets, until ye shall say: Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord, in the clouds of heaven, and all the holy angels with him.” Jesus leaves the temple and is asked about a prophecy he had made earlier that the temple should be destroyed. He’s made this comment several times, most recently when he rebuked the Pharisees at His triumphal entry into Jerusalem just a few days earlier as recorded in Luke 19:44. Jesus answers the question saying, “Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here, upon this temple, one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.” Pretty bleak.

I am assuming that as Jesus goes from place to place, his following gets smaller and smaller because after leaving Jerusalem, “he say upon the Mount of Olives,” and his “disciples” who I think are going to be the soon to be Apostles come to him asking two questions. When Jesus left the temple he referenced that he would not be back in a relatively permanent capacity until he will come forth in his glory in the clouds, meaning His second coming. Then as he left the city he was asked about and answered questions about the specific destruction of the city of Jerusalem. These are some pretty heavy topics and I can imagine that the disciples were interested in some further explanation. So they come to Jesus as he’s sitting on the Mount of Olives and asks him two questions. First tell us when shall these things be which thou hast said concerning the destruction of the temple, and the Jews.” And second, “what is the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world, or the destruction of the wicked, which is the end of the world?” Trust me, I didn’t figure this out by myself, I read those verses several times and still had no idea that they were asking two separate and specific questions, I got it from the IM.
First, a definition of the “end of the world.” The IM quotes the Prophet Joseph Smith as teaching, “According to (the Savior’s) language, the end of the world is the destruction of the wicked; the harvest and the end of the world have an allusion direction to the human family in the last days, instead of the earth, as many have imagined.” The IM continues, “Thus, the end of the world is not the end of the earth but the end of wickedness.” I always imagined that it was when the earth would be destroyed, but I guess that’s not going to happen, the earth will be changed but not destroyed. But I like that there will be an end to wickedness. I think often about what it would be like with no Satan, if we just had to deal with the trials that come with living in a fallen world without having some guy beat us over the head with negativity all the time.
Let’s work on the first question first. When the disciples asked these questions, from their perspective the destruction of Jerusalem and Christ’s second coming probably looked like related events. But looking at it from a 2,000 year advantage, we can see just how separate they are. Jesus begins by warning, “take heed that no man deceive your; for many shall come in my name, saying- I am Christ- and shall deceive many.” Why that disclaimer in the very beginning? “When will Jerusalem and the temple be destroyed?” “Don’t let anyone fool you.” It almost seems like that answer is not proportionate to the question. Who would want to fool the disciples about the destruction of Jerusalem? The Pharisees for one. Their livelihood is held in the fact that God favors the Jews and will protect them and the temple, so they probably weren’t interested in keeping the idea of destruction around. Why would a false Christ want to trick people into thinking that Jerusalem can not be destroyed? Well, the Jewish people were looking for a warrior Messiah to free them from Roman rule. A false Christ could feed off of that expectation, and convince the people to rebel. Which I guess looking at it, is exactly what happened.
A false Christ wouldn’t necessarily have to be someone who came and said “I am the Messiah,” it could be anyone who professed communion with God, who viewed themselves as uber-righteous, or who tried to lead the people with a pretense of religion. The zealots who instigated the war with Rome that led to the destruction of the city did just that. They were able to convince other people that their beliefs about God were right and got hundreds of thousands of other Jews involved in a conflict that they wanted nothing to do with and ended violently. Jesus continues, “then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you, and ye shall be hated of all nations, for my name’s sake.” I wonder who the “they” are in this statement? Is it the false-Christs that are delivering up the apostles to be executed, or is it other disbelieving Jews? I think that maybe I’m going about this the wrong way. Maybe it’s not best for me to dissect every word that has been recorded here, but perhaps to stay with main concepts and ideas for now.
Interestingly, the IM doesn’t comment on JS-Matt 1:10 but does ask a question about it. The verse says “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” The question is “What does this verse teach about how sin affects one’s ability to love? What examples of this cause and effect relationship have you seen in the world today?” I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this concept, and I only have to look as far as myself to answer some of it. Sin is selfishness, and I don’t mean to sit here and beat a drum of self-righteousness, but I’m probably more sinful than a lot of people and I’m the first to admit that it is fully rooted in selfishness. I mean how did I know that sin affects one’s ability to love? Because I’ve lived that life for quite some time now, about 30 years actually, so I know this from personal experience. Our degree of selfishness is indirectly proportionate to our ability to feel anything for anyone else, meaning that the more we think about ourselves, the less we are able to think about any one else. In this life we have a finite amount of energy, and like I told my kids last night, if I have to spend all my energy dealing with negativity then I don’t have any energy left over for positive things.
How does love wax cold? What does it mean if love is hot? It would mean that the feeling would be bright, give warmth, like being alive. Wax means that it doesn’t happen instantly. I imagine a candle, heat makes the wax melt, it’s easily shaped, malleable. Once the first goes out, the wax slowly begins to harden and become cold. At that point it’s not really good for anything except a paper-weight, where as the warm wax can be made into any number of things.  For love to “wax cold” implies that at one time it was hot, but the heat was extinguished and over time, the love devolved into a useless lump. Rarely do people begin with big sins, adultery, murder, just like most people aren’t pathologic narcissists, but over time we justify an ever increasing amount of acceptable selfishness. Eventually we end up looking at ourselves and who we used to be and it’s a night and day difference.
It’s really a baffling experience, to look at some of the atrocities that happen in the world and then turn back to your dinner like nothing ever happened. Look at the genocide in Rawanda and Darfur and the Sudan. There would be a short few minute segment about it on the news sometimes and then everyone would click off the tv and turn back to their dinner like it was nothing, while people were literally being hacked to death with machetes. And I think that a lot of it is desensitization because there are SO many problems in the world and it never seems to stop no matter what we do. There are constantly people at war with each other, and once that war stops another starts, and then there are kidnappings and murders in our neighborhoods and we have to be more concerned with teaching our children to protect themselves than mass murder in some other country because it affects us personally.
Most people aren’t in a position to give up their job and work on world peace through a grass roots movement. Most people are willing to give what little money they have to help others, but then we learn that most charitable organizations give less 1% of the money received to the actual cause and the rest goes to “administrative” costs. So most people who feel like the only way that they can contribute to any worthwhile cause is to give money are defrauded out of that money by other people who are so corrupt that they look at an atrocity and think, “hey if I tell people I’ll help those less fortunate then I’ll take their money and go on an exotic vacation.” Talk about love waxing cold.
Let’s think about the analogy like this, if you have a candle that it dripping hot wax, then that wax is in a condition that would allow it to be added to another candle. Or two hot candles can combine wax and make a third candle, and the light spreads and spreads to everyone. That is the power of love. But cold, hard wax is pretty useless. There is a new movement called “Porn Kills Love” which I completely support. Pornography degrades all parties into treating other people like objects. I think that if we can compare a burning candle to anything it would be love, and especially the passionate kind that is part of our human nature. The crazy proliferation of pornography use has snuffed out much of the passionate, feeling part of love. It’s replaced emotional and spiritual connections and commitment with random, brief encounters. Looking at it that way, I can see the “love” aspect being taken out of relationships completely and replaced with a feeling of disposability and urgency.  
When Jesus says that love waxes cold because of iniquity, maybe he’s not just referring to individual sins, like watching porn makes it difficult to love aspects of the relationship with your wife, and being more general, like blood thirsty men start wars in many countries and there’s nothing you can do about it. For me personally, I just feel like there is so much evil and wrong going on all the time, it’s overwhelming to know that I can’t make it stop and if I try they will probably kill me before I have the chance to do much. I think that in this case we should think about adopting the star fish philosophy. A girl is walking along a beach with thousands of washed up star fish and one by one is throwing them back in the water. Someone asks her why she’s throwing the star fish back, “there’s too many to make a difference.” She throws in another star fish and says, “makes a difference to that one.” We can’t fix everything and we probably shouldn’t even bother trying to do it all. But we can make a difference where we are.