Luke 21: 5-19 may be the least consoling words from a man who preached peace, compassion, and love. most popular preachers and writers try to fix a timetable for eschatological times from it. It in fact does not indicate any time, perhaps there is no common time that is applicable to all. It is not about predicting timetable but for forming character, for the passage ends saying, through your endurance you shall save your soul.
Luke penned his gospel around 85 CE, a decade and a half after the Roman legions had reduced Jerusalem and its magnificent Temple to rubble. One can scarcely imagine the trauma that reverberated through the early Christian communities—the very stones that had seemed eternal, the sacred spaces where God's presence had dwelt, now scattered and profaned. Surely, many whispered, this must be the end. The apocalypse had arrived. Yet Luke's response to this existential crisis reveals a pastoral wisdom that transcends his particular historical moment. His threefold purpose in recording Jesus's eschatological discourse speaks to the perennial human tendency to anchor our faith in the wrong harbours.
Luke's immediate concern was pastoral: to steady a community teetering on the edge of despair. Do not be deceived, Jesus warns. The end is not yet. But beneath this temporal reassurance lies a more profound spiritual truth—that we habitually misplace our trust in the monumental, the impressive, the seemingly permanent. The anecdote about Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper illuminates this beautifully. After the painting was done it was displayed to the nobles and the critiques; they praised the glow on the cup, and positioned that as the centre of the painting. Da Vinci recognised the profound error. He had inadvertently directed their gaze towards an object rather than towards Christ himself. With deliberate strokes of dull paint, he obscured the cup's brilliance, restoring the proper centre of attention. The message is clear: even our most beautiful religious constructions—whether physical temples or theological systems—can become idols if they displace the living God. Let the nonessentials die out. Let Christ and his essence emerge.
I watched a Malayalam play recently, Pakarakkaran, which could be loosely be translated as a substitute person, an alternative person, a stand in, or some who stands instead of another person having a vicarious element; something like what Maximillian Kolbe did with the prisoner who was to be shot. Here the story is about Barabbas in the Gospels. He was arrested and was in prison as a political criminal who had carried out riots in Judea and other Roman-ruled territories, for his personal reasons. During the trial of Jesus, Pilate, intending to set Jesus free asked the Jews, 'as it is the custom during the passover, whom do you want me to set free, your Jesus or Barabbas? To his astonishment, they cried out to set Barabbas free and crucify Jesus. Barabbas became the man instead of Jesus. But as the play progresses one get to understand that in truth Jesus took the place of Barabbas the criminal. Jesus takes the place of the sinful, the outcaste, the poor, and suffers as a Pakarakkaran.
That brings us to the question of Christ facing, trial, tribulation, persecution, and how he responded to it. How he died is a lesson for eschatological times. His firm facing of persecution and death has been saving testament to Peter, the other thief, the centurion, and in some ways, according to the play, Barabbas—he could not kill anymore, They were overcome by the piercing gaze of Jesus. By your endurance you will save your soul and others' souls.
No opponents can resist forgiveness. No opponents can resist understanding. This isn't naïve optimism but battle-tested wisdom. Those who came to trap Jesus with clever questions sometimes left converted. Those who approached with selfish motives occasionally departed purified. Not always—the gospel is honest about rejection—but often enough to validate the approach. This is what holding on to what is just and true looks like in practice: maintaining the capacity for mercy when mercy seems foolish, extending understanding when anger feels justified, offering forgiveness when revenge appears righteous. It's an attitude that refuses to let persecution define us, that insists on remaining fully human—and therefore fully divine—even when treated inhumanely.
What does it mean to "hold on to what is just and true" in the face of such trials? The text itself provides the answer: By your endurance you will gain your souls. Consider the alternative scenarios. What if Jesus, facing his final hours, had succumbed to fear and fled? What if he had mobilised his followers into violent revolt? What if he had cursed his persecutors from the cross? The thief beside him would not have found paradise. The centurion would not have declared, "Truly this was the Son of God." The entire trajectory of history would have shifted.
Instead, Jesus demonstrated "the hero's attitude"—neither passive resignation nor vengeful retaliation, but active endurance infused with forgiveness and understanding. This is the posture Luke urges upon his readers: to face persecution not as victims but as witnesses, not with fear but with the strange courage that comes from knowing one's life tells a larger story.
The eschatological vision isn't primarily about predicting timetables but about forming character—the kind of character that can hold fast to justice and truth when everything else gives way. In a world still anxious about endings, still tempted to place faith in impressive but ultimately fragile structures, Luke's message resonates with undiminished power: By your endurance you will gain your soul.
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