$ Verily I say unto you: This generation shall not pass away, until all these things shall have been fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away 2. But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but my Father only. Take ye heed: watch and pray; for ye know not, when the time is. And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life; and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them, that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and that ye may stand before the Son of man 3 But, as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be, For, as, in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark; and knew not, until the flood came and took them all away: so shall also the coming of the Son of man be*. Matt. xxiv. 34. 2 Matt. xxiv. 35. * Matt. xxiv. 36. 4 Matt. xxiv. 37, Luke xxi. 32. Luke xxi, 34, 35, 36. Mark xiii. 30. Therefore be ye also ready: for, in such an hour as you think not, the Son of man cometh'. Such is the celebrated prophecy of our Lord, when the three accounts of it, as delivered by the three first evangelists, are blended together har¬ monically in one unbroken series. We may now proceed to the discussion of it. I. In answer to those expressions of admiration which the disciples had uttered on a survey of the magnificence of the temple, Christ had abruptly declared to them, that the days would assuredly arrive, when that splendid edifice should be so utterly subverted from its very foundations, that not a single stone should be left standing upon ano ther. Mix youit. Astounded by such an assertion, which, as we may naturally suppose, would deeply imprint itself upon their recollection, the disciples, particularly Peter and James and John and Andrew, took the first opportunity of coming privately to their Master, as he sat on the mount of Olives over against the temple, in order that they might obtain from him some further information respecting a topic at once so awfully interesting and so theologically im portant. augi ei ka With this object, they propounded to our Lord the following somewhat complex question. Master, tell us, when shall these things be: and what is the sign, when all these things shall be about to be fulfilled: and what is the sign of thy coming and of the end of the age?... This question, on the part of the disciples, was produced by the previous declaration on the part of Christ, that the temple should be utterly subverted. In asking, therefore, when shall these things be; the disciples must doubtless be understood to ask the time, when that particular event, namely the subversion of the temple, might be expected to occur. Now this part of their question is perfectly natural and intelligible: but the latter part of it, as exhibited by St. Matthew, is apparently altogether. wide of the mark; for, upon a hasty inspection, we do not quite immediately or quite distinctly perceive, what could have induced the disciples to mingle together two inquiries which seem so little connected with each other, as an inquiry relative to the time of the temple's destruction, and an inquiry relative to the end of the age and the time of Christ's advent. The clue to such a peculiar mode of putting the question (in which, on the one hand, the coming of Christ is immediately connected with the destruction of the temple; while, on the other hand, the end of the age is immediately connected with the coming of Christ) is afforded, if I mistake not, by the writings of two of the ancient Hebrew prophets, Zechariah and Daniel. 1. Our Lord, we have seen, foretells the ap proaching subversion of the temple: an event, which, whenever it should occur, would of course be understood as accompanied by the destruction of Jerusalem. : Now such a prophecy would immediately recall to the memory of a Jewish audience the remarkable and apparently parallel prediction of Zechariah. Behold, the day of Jehovah cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem: and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished: and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city'. To this prediction, our Lord would, naturally though erroneously, be supposed to refer : because, since both he and Zechariah alike foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, the disciples would readily conclude, that they announced the same destruction. Such being the case, the remainder of Zechariah's prophecy will at once shew us the reason, why they mingled in the same question an inquiry as to the time when the temple would be subverted and an inquiry as to the time when Christ would come. Then shall Jehovah go forth and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east: and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley: and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south: and Jehovah my God shall come, and all the saints with thee'. The disciples were not ignorant, that the tutelary Jehovah of their nation was the great messenger of the covenant, Jehovah sent by Jehovah: nor were they ignorant of what their Rabbins unanimously taught, that the great angel of the covenant was no other than the promised Messiah. Three of those who put the question to our Lord, Peter and James and John, had with their own eyes beheld him radiant in all the divine effulgence of the Shechinah at the time of his transfiguration and from this appearance they must have drawn the conclusion which it was intended they should draw, that Jesus was at once the Messiah and the Messenger-Jehovah of the covenant. Entertaining such sentiments, they would clearly enough perceive, that the Jehovah, whose figurative manifestation synchronically with the resettlement of the Jews in their own land is here predicted by Zechariah, is no other than the 1 Zechar. xiv. 3, 4, 5. 2 Compare Gen. xlviii. 15, 16. xxxii. 24-30. Hos. xii. 2-5. Zechar. ii. 8-11. xii. 8, 9, 10. Malach. iii. 1-6: and see my Hor, Mosaic. book ii. sect. 1. chap. 2, 3. 2d edit. |