What are the birth pains Jesus mentions in Matthew 24?

Question 10077.

The birth pains Jesus mentions in Matthew 24 are the opening troubles of the end times: false messiahs, wars and rumours of wars, famines and earthquakes in various places. Having listed them He says, “All these are but the beginning of the birth pains” (Matthew 24:8).

The image is deliberately chosen and it repays attention. Jesus could have said the beginning of sorrows, or of troubles, and the older translations often do. What He actually used was the language of childbirth, and every part of that comparison carries meaning.

Where the phrase sits in the discourse

The disciples had asked two questions on the Mount of Olives: when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age. Jesus answers at length, and the birth pains belong to the first movement of His reply.

His opening word is a warning against deception. “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.” Then wars, and the instruction not to be alarmed, “for this must take place, but the end is not yet.”

Only after those items does He use the phrase. Verse 9 then moves to persecution and betrayal, verse 15 to the abomination of desolation, and verse 21 to great tribulation. The structure is escalating, and the birth pains are the earliest stage.

My answer on the Olivet Discourse sets out the shape of the whole sermon, which helps enormously in placing this phrase correctly.

What labour actually teaches us

The Greek word is odin, the pang of childbirth. It was a stock prophetic image. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea and Micah all use it of national distress, so the disciples would have caught the reference at once.

Three features of labour matter here. The pains increase in frequency and intensity as the birth approaches. They are irreversible once begun; nobody talks a labour into stopping. And they end in life rather than in death, which is why the image is hopeful rather than grim.

That last point is the one most often missed. Jesus is not describing a world grinding down into ruin. He is describing a world in labour, and what is being delivered is His kingdom.

Paul uses the same picture of creation itself, which “has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22). The groaning is purposeful.

The image also carries a note of inevitability that I find steadying rather than frightening. Once labour begins, the outcome is settled. Whatever the world does in those days, the birth pains are not a sign that God has lost control of the delivery.

Are we seeing them now?

Here I want to be careful. Wars, famines and earthquakes have marked every century since the first, and Christians in every generation have identified their own troubles as the beginning of the birth pains. So far, every one of them has been mistaken.

Jesus Himself anticipated the mistake. Of wars and rumours of wars He said, “See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.” That is an explicit instruction not to treat these events as proof that the end has arrived.

What the image does allow is a general observation. If the pains intensify as the birth nears, then increasing frequency and severity would be expected. But measuring that from news coverage is a fool’s errand, since coverage has increased rather faster than catastrophe.

I take the birth pains proper to belong to the first half of Daniel’s seventieth week, when the seal judgements of Revelation 6 unleash a false peacemaker, war, famine and death in exactly the order Jesus listed. The parallel between Matthew 24 and Revelation 6 is close enough to be deliberate.

That said, I have no interest in pretending the present looks tame. Wars, displacement, famine and religious deception are all thoroughly familiar to anyone who reads the news. My caution is about the inference rather than the observation, since every century could have said the same and did.

The list itself

False messiahs come first, which is significant. Jesus regarded religious deception as a greater danger than political catastrophe, and He returns to the theme twice more in the same chapter, warning that false christs and false prophets will perform great signs and wonders.

Then wars and rumours of wars, nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom. Then famines and earthquakes in various places. Luke’s account adds pestilences and terrors and great signs from heaven.

These are the birth pains: disorder in the political, natural and religious spheres at once. Each of them is a species of the disorder sin brought into the world, concentrated and intensified.

Verse 9 onwards shifts to what happens to believers: delivered up to tribulation, hated by all nations, many falling away and betraying one another, and the love of many growing cold. Persecution belongs to the same season.

Mark adds that these things will happen and “the end is not yet,” and Luke places persecution before the birth pains rather than after them, which suggests the order is not rigidly chronological. Jesus is describing a texture of events rather than issuing a timetable.

The gospel preached to all nations

In the middle of it comes a promise: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).

That is not a description of the world getting better. It is a description of God getting His witness out regardless. Revelation 14 shows an angel flying in mid-heaven with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.

So the birth pains are accompanied by the loudest evangelistic effort in history. Judgement and mercy run alongside each other, which is how God has always worked.

I do not read verse 14 as a condition the Church must satisfy before the Rapture can occur, since I hold the Rapture to be signless. It describes the tribulation period rather than this one.

Birth pains and the suddenness of the end

Paul uses the same image with a different emphasis. “While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labour pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

There the point is unexpectedness and inescapability. Labour arrives when it arrives, and no amount of denial postpones it. The world will be talking about stability at precisely the wrong moment.

Held together, the two passages give a balanced picture. The birth pains are recognisable in retrospect and increasing in intensity, and the end still arrives suddenly for those who were not watching.

That combination is why Jesus follows His teaching with parables about readiness rather than with a timetable.

Both writers, incidentally, expect their readers to know what labour is like. The New Testament is not squeamish about the realities of the body, and it draws its picture of the end of the age from the most ordinary and most costly thing human beings do.

How not to use this passage

Do not use it as a seismograph. Counting earthquakes and comparing decades has been a minor industry in prophecy circles for fifty years, and the data has never supported the claims made from it.

Do not use it to frighten people. The image Jesus chose is one of expectation and hope, and a preacher who turns it into pure dread has changed the metaphor. Mothers endure labour because of what is coming.

And do not use it to guess dates. Jesus followed this section with the plain statement that no one knows the day or hour, and my answer on date-setting explains why I regard every attempt as disobedience rather than devotion.

Use it as Jesus used it: to keep His people alert, unshaken by alarming news, and busy at their posts.

And do not use it to excuse passivity. Some Christians treat the coming distress as a reason to withdraw, stockpile and wait. The parables that follow this teaching commend servants who were working, feeding and trading when the master arrived.

So, now what?

When the headlines are grim, remember what the labour is producing. The world is not haemorrhaging towards nothing; it is straining towards the appearing of the King. That perspective is worth more than any chart.

And take the warning against deception seriously, since Jesus put it first. Are you well enough grounded in Scripture to recognise a false christ if a persuasive one turned up next year?

“And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.”

Matthew 24:6-8, ESV