Successive generations have pored over these words of our Lord with great eagerness, endeavoring to extract from them a clear forecast of the future. In the case of the early Christians, they warned them to flee to Pella, and in doing so, to escape the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. But to all of us they are full of instruction.
It is best to consider these paragraphs as containing a double reference. In the first place, up to Matthew 24:28, they evidently deal with the approaching fall of Jerusalem. Our Lord describes the events which were to mark the consummation of the age, Matthew 24:3, r.v., margin. Antichrists, disturbances of physical and national conditions, the persecutions which the infant Church must encounter, the progress of the gospel, and finally the swoop of the Roman eagles on their prey-all these were to mark the close of the Hebrew dispensation and the birth of the Christian Church. [source]
Chapter Summary: Matthew 24
1Jesus foretells the destruction of the temple; 3what and how great calamities shall be before it; 29the signs of his coming to judgment 36And because that day and hour are unknown, 42we ought to watch like good servants, expecting our Master's coming
What do the individual words in Matthew 24:13 mean?
The [one]howeverhaving enduredto [the]endhewill be saved