Is there bad news in the Gospel of Mark?

Answer 1

Jesus was speaking about the destruction of Jerusalem which did happen within the life time of that generation, some 40 years later. He employs the symbolism of clouds to warn His hearers that as judgement fell on Egypt, so would judgment soon befall Jerusalem. Jesus' coming on clouds to judge Jerusalem in the first century points forward to the end of time when He will appear again to judge the living and the dead.

Answer 2

There is a passage in Mark's Gospel that would have been both good news and bad news for the people who were intended to read it.

Mark chapter 13 says that Jesus told his listeners that the world will end during the lifetimes of those then still living, with Jesus prophesying the end of the world and his own return on clouds of glory. Jesus told them that they would see the great buildings destroyed, and the abomination of desolation, followed by stars falling from heaven and the Son of man coming in clouds of glory, and that this would take place during their own generation.

The great buildings of Jerusalem were indeed destroyed at around the time Mark's Gospel is believed to have been written, and it certainly must have seemed as if the world was about to end, but it was not to be. At least not within the timeframe Mark's Gospel stated.