barren, is now used as a metaphor. Whereas it is barren now, when it is summer it will be about to bear its fruit, like these signs signal that God's plan is about to be fulfilled. The parable of the man on the journey cautions the disciples that they should always be on watch, as he could return at any moment and would want the house well cared for. There are several interpretations of all this. The most straightforward is that there will be a horrible event in Judea and that at some unspecified time Jesus will come and gather his "elect", the term early Christians used to refer to themselves. The statement that "this generation" will still be around to see the coming of these things has posed problems for those who hold that this is a literal prediction of the end of the world, and has given rise to such legends as the Wandering Jew. The word for generation also means race in Ancient Greek, and so could refer to the Jews, or perhaps all people. Others think Jesus is just using the apocalyptic language of his time symbolically, as many Jewish prophets did, to highlight the fact that Christian suffering and Jerusalem's destruction, though seemingly the end of the world, are necessary to achieve what Jesus deems will be the final victory of good over evil and that this generation refers to seeing Jerusalem's destruction. Many have interpreted this as Jesus predicting the end of the world and his Second Coming. Jesus' statement about the sun and moon sounds very apocalyptic. It is a quote from Isaiah 13:10 where Isaiah uses it metaphorically as part of his prophecy of the fall of Babylon. The stars falling from the sky is from Isaiah 34:4 about God's judgement on all the nations of the world. Perhaps there is a political connotation here. By using these two quotations together, Jesus might be comparing the Roman domination Israel is currently undergoing to the Babylonian captivity it had undergone six centuries previously. The coming of the kingdom of God would be replacing Roman rule with God's rule just as the Jews were freed from Babylon. Yet whereas the Babylonian captivity ended with the return to Jerusalem, the replacement of Roman rule will be preceded by Jerusalem's destruction, a sharp change in what people thought of as the coming of God's kingdom. It