Mark 13:3

‘And as he sat on the mount of Olives opposite the Temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately.'

The group had now left the Temple and returned to their camp on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. The view from the mount of Olives enabled the Temple to be seen clearly and reminded the disciples of what Jesus had said. Two things demonstrate the accuracy of the account. Firstly that the change in scene is described when, if it was not true, it was not necessary. They had moved to the Mount of Olives. In fact we could argue that there would have been more impact if His words had occurred on the spot with the great stones near at hand. And secondly in that Andrew has joined up with the Inner Three. There may be the thought here that these were the ones whom He had called first (that is, in Mark, see Mark 1:16) and that they now learned of their future, but if Mark had wanted us to see that he would surely have said ‘Peter and Andrew, and James and John'. Here Andrew was therefore an added extra to the Inner Three, tacked on the end simply because he was there.

On the other hand the mount of Olives was a good spot for such revelations for it was a spot which was seen as having an apocalyptic future. It was the place where God was going to reveal His powerful and personal activity on behalf of His people, ‘His feet will stand in that day on the Mount of Olives' (Zechariah 14:4), and we should note that the feet of Jesus were undoubtedly there. But this may simply be one of those divine ‘coincidences' which also occur elsewhere in the Bible, for Mark draws no attention to it, although he might well have expected those who knew their Scriptures thoroughly to draw their own conclusions. Others have connected it with the movement of YHWH from the Temple on to a mountain east of Jerusalem, from which point He would presumably watch the destruction of Jerusalem as found in Ezekiel 11:23. There may even have been a hint of that in Jesus making His camp there.