Mark 13:7 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Ver. 7,8. Matthew adds pestilences. Luke saith, pestilences, and fearful sights and great signs from heaven. See Poole on "Matthew 24:6", and following verses to Matthew 24:8. Here are two or three more signs put together: 1. Wars, and rumours of wars; great commotions in nations, which though they may be at other times, yet probably may be more extraordinary before the day of judgment. 2. Famines, pestilences, and earthquakes. 3. Fearful sights, and apparitions in the air and the heavens. Such there were (as Josephus tells us) before the destruction of Jerusalem; and though these things be seen before the last day, yet it is most probable they will be greater before the day of judgment than at any time before; and for fearful sights, and great signs from heaven, they ordinarily go before some great judgment of God upon places, and therefore the observation of them by the heathen (as we learn by Livy and others) seems but to be a piece of natural religion; and Christ giving these things as signs of the approaching ruin, first of Jerusalem, then of the world, will make thinking Christians behold them with a religious fear, though not to undertake to expound them particularly or prophesy upon them. Certainly we ought to look upon them as prognosticating some great work of God, and usually of judgment upon sinners.