The prophetical discourse of which Matthew 24:6 forms a part has been the subject of conflicting explanation ever since it was originally uttered. The verse reads: "And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet."

The grand difficulty lies in the appropriateness of its terms to two distinct and distant events: the end of the world and the destruction of Jerusalem. Some interpreters hold that the one catastrophe was meant to typify the other. Others that the discourse may be mechanically divided by assuming a transition, at a certain point, from one of these great subjects to the other. Still others, that it describes a sequence of events to be repeated more than once, a prediction to be verified, not once for all, nor yet by a continuous progressive series of events, but in stages and at intervals, like repeated flashes of lightning.