Do the Birth Pains of Matthew 24 Point to A.D. 70?

Testing Gary DeMar’s Historical Case Against the Text and the First-Century Record

Gary DeMar makes a strong historical claim about the Olivet Discourse. In Wars and Rumors of Wars, he argues that the prophecy Jesus gave on the Mount of Olives was fulfilled before the generation of Jesus’ hearers passed away. He describes the relevant scholarship as showing that Jesus’ prophecy was fulfilled “in exacting detail” within that first-century horizon.¹

That claim deserves to be tested at exactly the level at which it is made.

The question is not whether wars, famines, earthquakes, pestilences, religious deceivers, or celestial phenomena occurred between the ministry of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. They did. A serious critique of preterism should concede that evidence rather than minimize it. The real question is whether the secure historical record itself plainly exhibits the complete complex Jesus describes when he gathers these phenomena together and calls them “the beginning of birth pains” (Matt. 24:8).

That distinction changes the entire discussion.

It is comparatively easy to search four decades of ancient history and find a war here, a famine there, an earthquake elsewhere, a plague at Rome, a religious prophet in Judea, and a comet before the Jewish revolt. But the existence of individual parallels does not by itself demonstrate that history displays the recognizable pattern Jesus described. The proper question is not whether an interpreter can reconstruct a birth-pain pattern from first-century history, but whether first-century history itself plainly exhibits the birth-pain pattern Jesus described.

“All These Things” Are Called Birth Pains

Matthew’s wording matters. Jesus does not merely list unrelated calamities. He warns that many will come in his name saying, “I am the Christ,” and will deceive many. He speaks of wars and reports of wars, nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, famines, and earthquakes in various places. Then he gathers the preceding phenomena together with πάντα δὲ ταῦτα—“all these things”—and characterizes them collectively as ἀρχὴ ὠδίνων, “the beginning of birth pains.”

The metaphor should not be pressed into an artificial mathematical theory. Jesus does not provide contraction intervals, percentages, or a statistical curve of increasing frequency. But neither does the metaphor contribute nothing. Birth pains are recognizable because they belong to a developing process moving toward a culmination. To reduce “birth pains” to “bad things happen before the end” empties the metaphor of most of its identifying force.

The historical test, therefore, is more demanding than a checklist. It asks whether the phenomena Jesus names actually appear together in the historical record as a recognizable onset of developing travail.

This is especially important because several of the predicted categories are historically common. DeMar himself makes this point about earthquakes. He writes that earthquakes were common in that period, “as they are for our time and all time.”² That observation is fair. But it creates a methodological problem for his fulfillment argument: if earthquakes characterize virtually every era, then the mere existence of earthquakes within A.D. 30–70 has little power to identify that period as the unique fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy. The more common a predicted phenomenon is, the more evidentiary weight must fall on the distinctive configuration in which the text places it.

And that is where the evidence becomes uneven.

The Historical Record Really Does Contain Wars, Famines, Earthquakes, and Plague

A responsible critique should begin by granting DeMar’s strongest evidence.

There were genuine wars. Rome fought in Britain. Conflict over Armenia involved Roman and Parthian interests. The Jewish revolt began in A.D. 66. The Roman world then entered the brutal civil wars of A.D. 68–69. Whatever one makes of every individual “rumor of war,” the period was certainly not free from warfare.

There were also serious famines and shortages. Josephus records severe famine conditions in Judea during the reign of Claudius. Suetonius describes a grain shortage at Rome produced by repeated crop failures, and Tacitus records a remarkable conjunction of repeated earthquake shocks and scarcity. In Annals 12.43, Tacitus describes Rome suffering from crop failure and consequent famine while the city was also disturbed by repeated shocks. That is unusually strong evidence because it is not an interpreter artificially joining two unrelated categories; the ancient source itself places famine and seismic disturbance in the same episode.³

The earthquake evidence is likewise real. Tacitus says Laodicea was overthrown by an earthquake and rebuilt from its own resources (Annals 14.27). He also records severe earthquake damage at Pompeii (Annals 15.22). These reports should be conceded as genuine category correspondence.

Pestilence is even clearer. DeMar cites Suetonius for a severe plague under Nero, reporting that “within the space of one autumn there died no less than thirty thousand persons” according to the records of Libitina.⁴ Tacitus independently describes the same period in bleak terms, saying that “the houses were filled with lifeless forms and the streets with funerals.”⁵ This is straightforward evidence for a severe pestilence before A.D. 70.

The later 60s also present the strongest case for an actual calamity cluster. Plague, revolt, civil war, scarcity, religious deception, portent traditions, and the destruction of Jerusalem all accumulate within a relatively compressed span. Any final argument should acknowledge this plainly.

The problem for DeMar is therefore not that the first-century record contains no relevant phenomena. It contains many. The problem appears when the text’s most distinctive predicates are tested with the same rigor.

The False-Christ Prediction Is Not Generic Religious Deception

Matthew 24:5 is much more specific than “religious deceivers will appear.” Jesus says that many will come in his name saying, “I am the Christ,” and will deceive many.

Later in the discourse, Matthew removes any remaining ambiguity about the nature of this deception. Jesus warns that people will say, “Here is the Christ” or “There!” (24:23). False Christs and false prophets will arise and produce great signs and wonders (24:24). Reports will claim, “He is in the wilderness” or “He is in the inner rooms” (24:26). Jesus then contrasts those localized reports with his genuine coming, which will be as publicly unmistakable as lightning flashing across the sky (24:27).

This sequence is critical. The deception is not merely that a prophet has appeared, that a revolutionary leader claims divine favor, or that a ruler acts like a king. The deception consists in falsely identifying someone as the Messiah.

That means the historical evidence has to preserve the relevant predicate. A prophet is not automatically a false Christ. A sign claimant is not automatically a false Christ. A royal pretender is not automatically a false Christ. The fact that one category could overlap another does not permit them to be treated as interchangeable.

Matthew himself distinguishes false Christs from false prophets in 24:24. That distinction becomes decisive when the alleged first-century candidates are examined.

Theudas: A Strong False-Prophet Candidate, a Weak False-Christ Candidate

DeMar appeals to Theudas, who gathered followers and promised an extraordinary sign at the Jordan. In his summary of the ancient report, DeMar writes that Theudas told his followers “that by his command the Jordan river would part and they would walk across in safety.”⁶

This is important evidence. It gives us a religious leader, followers, deception, and an extraordinary sign claim.

But Josephus’ own category for Theudas is prophet. In Antiquities 20.97–99, Josephus reports that Theudas persuaded a large number of people to follow him to the Jordan and promised to divide the river. What the source does not give us is the defining Matthean predicate: “I am the Christ.”

The distinction cannot be dismissed as pedantry. Matthew predicts both false Christs and false prophets. If Josephus explicitly presents a man as a prophet who promises a sign, then the most direct correspondence is to the false-prophet category. To classify him additionally as a false Christ requires further positive evidence.

A promised miracle does not solve the problem because Matthew 24:24 attributes signs and wonders to both false Christs and false prophets. The sign therefore cannot by itself tell us which category the claimant belongs to.

The Egyptian: Wilderness Geography Is Not Messianic Identity

The Egyptian prophet presents the same problem in an even sharper form.

DeMar appeals to Josephus’ reports that impostors and deceivers led people into the wilderness and promised divine signs. He also points to the Egyptian, who gathered followers and promised that Jerusalem’s walls would fall. DeMar emphasizes the wilderness connection because Matthew 24:26 says, “If they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the wilderness,’ do not go out.”

At first glance the parallel is impressive. But it omits the controlling predicate.

Matthew does not predict:

A deceiver will be in the wilderness.

Matthew predicts:

The supposed Christ will be reported as being in the wilderness.

Geography cannot supply a missing identity claim. Josephus gives us prophets and deceivers operating in the wilderness. The text of Matthew requires reports that the Christ is there.

This is precisely where the distinction between resemblance and fulfillment matters. “Wilderness” is a real point of contact. It is not sufficient by itself to establish the entire proposition Jesus predicts.

DeMar Acknowledges the Missing Messianic Predicate

What makes this problem especially important is that DeMar himself recognizes it. After surveying first-century impostors, he writes:

“Josephus does not describe these impostors as ‘Messiahs.’”⁷

DeMar answers that Josephus avoided the Greek term Christos and therefore may not have described even genuinely messianic figures with that terminology. That is a legitimate caution against an overly simplistic argument from silence. If Josephus had reasons to avoid the word, then the absence of the noun Christos alone cannot prove that no one had messianic pretensions.

But the logic stops there.

The proposition

Josephus may have avoided the term Christos

can support the conclusion

therefore the absence of that word does not prove non-messianic identity.

It cannot support the stronger conclusion

therefore Theudas, the Egyptian, or other prophets actually claimed to be Messiah.

An explanation for why evidence might be absent is not positive evidence that the missing fact existed.

DeMar pushes the possibility argument one step further when he writes, “there might have been false messiahs that never got their names in the history books of that era.”⁸ Again, that is conceivable. Ancient sources are fragmentary, and historical silence should not be turned into an absolute proof of non-occurrence.

But an undocumented fulfillment cannot simultaneously function as historically demonstrated fulfillment. The possibility that evidence was lost can limit the confidence of a negative conclusion; it cannot increase the positive evidence for the claim that the prophecy was fulfilled “in exacting detail.”

The Expected Historical Footprint of “Many” False Christs

The argument from silence is stronger here than it would be for an obscure private event.

Matthew predicts a phenomenon with a large expected historical footprint:

• many claimants;
• many deceived;
• public identification of persons as the Christ;
• circulating claims that the Christ is “here” or “there”;
• great signs and wonders;
• movement into the wilderness or private locations;
• deception significant enough to receive repeated warning.

The force of historical silence rises with the publicity, novelty, repetition, and social consequence of the predicted event. One obscure claimant could easily vanish from the record. Many public claimants, each deceiving many and becoming associated with remarkable signs, create multiple independent opportunities for preservation.

That matters especially because Josephus demonstrably preserves closely related phenomena. He records prophets, wilderness movements, impostors, sign claims, mass followings, revolutionary leaders, king-like figures, siege prophets, and extraordinary prodigy traditions. In other words, the surviving source environment is fully capable of preserving precisely the kinds of religious and political disturbances that surround the false-Christ prediction.

Yet the distinctive predicate—numerous people clearly presented as the Messiah—is comparatively difficult to document before A.D. 70.

This does not prove that no such person ever existed. It does materially weaken the claim that the phenomenon occurred plainly and extensively enough to constitute an obvious historical fulfillment.

Dositheus Is the Important Exception—and Should Be Conceded

A strong argument should not turn an evidentiary difficulty into an absolute.

Origen, writing considerably later, reports that Dositheus the Samaritan sought to persuade the Samaritans that he was “the Christ predicted by Moses.”⁹ That is qualitatively different from the evidence for Theudas or the Egyptian because it actually preserves an explicit messianic identification.

Dositheus therefore deserves to be counted as meaningful positive evidence.

But he does not solve the larger problem. Origen is a later witness, the chronology and biography of Dositheus are difficult, and one explicit claimant does not establish Matthew’s “many.” Nor does the Dositheus tradition by itself supply the developed Matthew 24:23–26 complex of repeated localized Messiah reports associated with great signs and wonders.

The responsible conclusion is therefore not “there were no first-century false Messiah claims.” It is that the surviving evidence does not comparably establish the plural and conspicuous phenomenon Matthew describes.

The Judaizer Argument Expands the Category Rather Than Filling It

DeMar also quotes James Jordan’s proposal that the Judaizers satisfy Jesus’ warning. Jordan writes that the Judaizers “fit perfectly Jesus’ predictions,” because they claimed to come in Christ’s name, misled many, claimed an anointing, and were false prophets.¹⁰

The problem is that those predicates do not equal “I am the Christ.”

A disputed claim to spiritual authority or “anointing” is not the same proposition as appropriating the identity of the Messiah. Likewise, the Johannine category of “antichrist” cannot simply be converted into Matthew’s “false Christ.” In 1 John, antichrist language centrally involves denying that Jesus is the Christ; in Matthew 24, the false Christ is one who falsely appropriates or receives messianic identification.

The concepts may overlap in a particular person, but they are not semantically identical.

The Judaizer proposal therefore supplies more evidence for false teachers and false prophets. It does not by itself fill the historical gap created by Matthew’s explicit messianic language.

Common Events Cannot Carry the Whole Fulfillment Claim

This brings the argument back to wars, famines, earthquakes, and plague.

DeMar has real historical evidence in these categories. But his own description of earthquakes as common “for our time and all time” reveals why simple occurrence is not enough. If wars, famines, earthquakes, and epidemics recur throughout history, then their isolated presence has limited power to discriminate one particular era as the fulfillment of Jesus’ words.

The evidentiary burden must therefore shift toward the more distinctive elements of the complex.

This is why the false-Christ evidence matters so much. An earthquake can occur in almost any generation. A famine can occur in many generations. Warfare is one of the most persistent realities of human history. But many persons falsely identified as the Messiah, deceiving many and associated with great signs and wonders, is a far more discriminating historical phenomenon.

And this is precisely where the evidence becomes weakest.

A Note on Tacitus and the Danger of Chronological Compression

The same source-critical discipline is needed when DeMar uses Roman historians.

DeMar cites Tacitus’ Histories for a dramatic period of disaster, including the famous statement that there were “three civil wars” and still more wars against foreign enemies.¹¹ The material is real, but its chronological use must be controlled.

Tacitus begins the Histories in A.D. 69, and the work originally extended through the reign of Domitian. The programmatic catalogue at the beginning therefore summarizes the scope of a history extending beyond A.D. 70. It cannot simply be treated wholesale as Tacitus’ description of A.D. 30–70.

Individual A.D. 69 events are relevant. The whole rhetorical catalogue is not evidence for four decades preceding Jerusalem’s fall.

This is a recurring methodological danger: once A.D. 70 has been selected as the endpoint, material from before, during, and even after the relevant period can be rhetorically compressed into a single apparent fulfillment cluster. Chronology must be controlled event by event.

Earthquakes: Real Evidence, but Mixed Evidentiary Quality

The earthquake evidence illustrates another important distinction: an ancient report is not always equal in historical weight to another ancient report.

Tacitus’ notices concerning Laodicea and Pompeii are straightforward historical earthquake reports. They deserve substantial confidence.

Josephus’ late-war “earthquake” is different. DeMar quotes a description of a “prodigious storm” involving violent wind, torrential rain, lightning, thunder, and earth-shaking.¹² This may reflect genuine seismic activity. But it occurs in a strongly portentous narrative setting, and it should not automatically be placed on the same evidentiary level as Tacitus’ matter-of-fact report that Laodicea was destroyed by an earthquake.

The difference becomes clearer when we turn to Josephus’ famous catalogue of portents before Jerusalem’s destruction.

Signs from Heaven: Event History and Prodigy Tradition Must Be Distinguished

There was at least one conspicuous astronomical phenomenon before the Jewish War: Halley’s Comet appeared in A.D. 66. That is independently recoverable astronomical history and should be granted as a strong candidate for a notable celestial sign.

Josephus, however, goes much further. He records a sword-like star and comet, extraordinary Temple light, a massive gate opening by itself, heavenly armies, supernatural voices—and even the astonishing report that a sacrificial heifer gave birth to a lamb (War 6.288–300).

Those traditions are historically important. They demonstrate that Jerusalem’s catastrophe became surrounded by prodigy reports.

But they do not all have the same evidentiary status as Halley’s Comet.

The correct distinction is:

Josephus historically attests that these prodigies were reported.

That is not identical to:

every prodigy is independently established as an event that literally occurred.

The heifer report provides a useful control. If one would not treat “a cow gave birth to a lamb” as secure event history merely because Josephus recorded it, consistency requires similar caution with the heavenly armies and miraculous Temple phenomena.

The same distinction applies when Tacitus preserves overlapping portent traditions. Multiple authors can establish that a tradition circulated without necessarily providing independent empirical verification of its extraordinary content.

The Late 60s Are the Strongest First-Century Candidate

At this point a concession is necessary.

The later 60s genuinely do look more like a calamity cluster than the preceding decades taken in isolation. The plague at Rome, the Jewish revolt, Roman civil war, famine and scarcity, prophetic activity, celestial phenomena, and Jerusalem’s destruction produce a real concentration of crisis.

A critique that says “nothing happened” will fail because too much clearly did happen.

The better question is whether the cluster contains the complete pattern Jesus described with comparable clarity.

This is where the asymmetry becomes decisive.

Wars? Strongly attested.

Famine? Strongly attested.

Earthquakes? Strongly attested.

Pestilence? Strongly attested.

Prophetic deceivers? Strongly attested.

A conspicuous comet? Strongly attested.

But many false Christs saying “I am the Christ,” deceiving many, followed by localized reports identifying the Christ here, there, in the wilderness, or in private rooms, with great signs and wonders supporting that identification? The direct evidence becomes far weaker.

That is not a minor detail at the edge of the prophecy. It is one of the most distinctive features of the complex.

Recognition or Reconstruction?

The historical issue can now be stated in a simple way.

Suppose we begin with Matthew 24 in hand and search the period from A.D. 30 to 70. We can find a famine, an earthquake, a war, a plague, prophetic claimants, a comet, and finally the Jewish War. It is possible to arrange those events under Jesus’ headings.

But that proves only that a reconstruction is possible.

The stronger question is whether the secure historical record, after ordinary source criticism, independently presents the same pattern so clearly that one would recognize the onset Jesus described rather than construct it by using Jesus’ prophecy as the template.

That is why doubtful prodigies, uncertain identifications, and category expansions matter. If the complete birth-pain pattern becomes visible only after prophets are relabeled Messiahs, royal figures are treated as false Christs without explicit evidence, wilderness geography is substituted for messianic identity, and prodigy reports are upgraded into secure event history, then the claimed pattern is being strengthened by the interpreter rather than by the sources.

A historically recognizable prophetic complex should remain recognizable after doubtful, ambiguous, duplicative, and conjecturally classified evidence is removed.

In this case, substantial component correspondence survives that pruning. The complete pattern does not survive with equal clarity.

What the Evidence Actually Supports

The first-century record provides more support for DeMar than some critics allow. There were genuine wars, severe famines, geographically dispersed earthquakes, devastating pestilence, religious deception, and striking celestial phenomena. The later 60s constitute a serious historical cluster and should be treated as such.

But DeMar’s larger claim is not merely that relevant events happened. His argument is that Jesus’ prophecy was fulfilled “in exacting detail.”¹

That is where the historical case becomes much more difficult.

The strongest evidence corresponds to the most common categories. The weakest evidence corresponds to the most distinctive one. The problem is not that Josephus never uses one particular Greek word. The problem is that the sources preserve prophets, deceivers, sign claimants, revolutionaries, and king-like figures far more clearly than they preserve the repeated false-messianic phenomenon Matthew actually describes.

Historical silence does not prove non-occurrence. But neither can it be converted into evidence of occurrence. And when the predicted phenomenon is public, plural, socially consequential, and associated with great signs and wonders, the absence of a correspondingly conspicuous historical footprint acquires real evidentiary weight.

The final question is therefore not, “Can first-century events be made to fit the categories?” Many can.

It is:

Does the secure record itself plainly exhibit the complete birth-pain complex Jesus described?

The evidence supports substantial first-century category correspondence. It supports a genuine late-first-century calamity cluster. What it does not establish with comparable clarity is the full, discriminating, and historically recognizable complex required by the stronger claim of fulfillment in “exacting detail.”

That is the difference between historical resemblance and demonstrated prophetic fulfillment.

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References

Primary Sources

Josephus, Flavius. The Antiquities of the Jews. Especially 20.97–99 and 20.167–172.

———. The Jewish War. Especially 2.258–263; 4.286; 6.285–300.

Origen. Contra Celsum. Especially 1.57.

Suetonius. The Lives of the Caesars. Especially Claudius 18.2 and Nero 39.

Tacitus. Annals. Especially 12.43; 14.27; 15.22; 16.13.

———. Histories. Especially 1.1–2.

Secondary Source

DeMar, Gary. Wars and Rumors of Wars: What Jesus Really Said About the End of the Age, Earthquakes, A Great Tribulation, Signs in the Heavens, and His Coming. 2nd updated ed. Powder Springs, GA: American Vision Press, 2023.