Our Lord had withdrawn from Jerusalem, and is followed to the Mount of Olives by His disciples, where this discourse takes place. They began the conversation by asking Him certain questions, which admitted the truth of a sentence He had just pronounced on the stones of the temple, though they themselves the moment before had been vainly admiring those stones.
It is interesting to see this. They looked on the temple now as a doomed and not a dedicated spot, and they desire to know when this doom should be accomplished, and what should signify to them the end of the world, and His return.
There was, therefore, in their minds a very simple faith. They admitted His truth, and their inquiries arose from thence. An end and a change were now looked for, because He had pronounced judgment on the present existing things of Israel. Still, however, there was a vast distance between the state of His mind at this moment and theirs. His was full of divine truth. He knew all the results of this needed end and change, and of Israel’s present judgment. But we are to be calm, and stay our minds on this: How far had the time come for unfolding to them all these results, in the full knowledge of which He was?
Now, we, too, are in the knowledge of these results in our way and measure; for the Spirit of truth has been given, and we know the things of the Father and of Christ, and heavenly mysteries consequent on Israel’s rejection, as Jesus then did. But we are to remember that the Lord was in converse then with those unto whom He says, on another (and I believe a deeper) occasion than the present: “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”
I must hold myself, therefore, in the remembrance that the parties in this discourse were thus widely different as to their then attainments, and in remembrance also of what their subject was.
I judge, then, that Matthew 24:4-144And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. 5For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. 6And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. 8All these are the beginning of sorrows. 9Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. 10And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. 11And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. 12And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. 13But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. 14And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. (Matthew 24:4‑14) forms one part of this discourse. I am sure that the Lord looked on His disciples as Christians, or believers in Him. And I am free to admit that these verses may be, read as a general account of things in Christendom as we speak, or of things that were to be known and experienced in that portion of the world that was thereafter to adopt the name of Christian, and that, therefore, we have in them the general external history of our dispensation. But I believe, in a special sense, these verses will find their accomplishment when Israel becomes again the scene of divine notice, or in that part of the reserved week of Daniel which is to precede the abominable desolator in the holy place, which is the action of Anti-Christ in Jerusalem bye and bye. (I see those signs, as I judge, in the first five seals in Revelation 6, and I suppose they will there be understood as belonging to actions in days not yet come.)
Then Matthew 24:15-2815When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) 16Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains: 17Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: 18Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. 19And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! 20But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: 21For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. 23Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. 24For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. 25Behold, I have told you before. 26Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. 27For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 28For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. (Matthew 24:15‑28) give us another period, a period following the exaltation of the great apostate in Jerusalem, and preceding the appearing of the Son of Man. But here the disciples are addressed as being only in that devoted land and city, and they are commanded to leave them for the mountains, and not be seduced therefrom by any promises that Christ and deliverance had come either in the open desert or in the secret chamber.
Matthew 36-44 tell them the moral state of things immediately on the appearing of the Son of Man, and of the discerning or separating power of that day, and enforces watchfulness upon them.
I pause here for the present. For the remainder may, without injury to what we have now gone through, be postponed.
I ask, then, how far does the Lord in this great discourse contemplate the heavenly destiny of the saints, and the fact and the time of their rapture?
It is judged that He gives two distinct notices of this mystery of the rapture of the saints into the air, in verse 31 and in verse 40. I desire grace to consider these verses, therefore, and to love the truth of God, or the mind of Christ, above all my own thoughts.
In verse 22, I find “the elect” spoken of, and spoken of as part of “all flesh,” and of the divine purpose of saving them as flesh, or in the flesh.
Now, I confess this is the strongest intimation to me, that the Lord was not contemplating His heavenly, but His earthly people. When by His Spirit, in the apostles afterward, He comes to speak of His heavenly ones, He distinctly tells us that the saving of the flesh was, and could be, of no account; for that flesh and blood could never inherit the heavens. Saved flesh must be for the inheritance of the earth. The elect of this verse are, I surely conclude, the Lord’s earthly remnant.
The elect are again spoken of in verse 24. And there they are presented as being preserved from the deceits of false Christs. I do not say that such words respecting them would necessarily determine them to be an earthly people. No. I believe, from Revelation 13, there will be many heavenly men exposed to deceits in that day, and in like manner preserved from being deceived. But having already established “the elect” of this chapter to be earthly, it is natural to continue in the one thought about them. And beside, the character of deceit here, signs and wonders connected with the assertion of Christ being in the desert and in the chambers, seems to address itself more plausibly, if not exclusively, to a remnant preparing for the earthly places.
Well then, “the elect” are again found in verse 31. They are spoken of, and not to, in the three places, and precisely under the same words, τούς ἐκλετοὺς. Is there, then, any reason to see another people here? My clear present assurance is, that there is none.
I believe the blessed Lord is here graciously closing the history of those whom. He had before been looking at. He looked at them, in verse 22, as the dear objects of His care, when perhaps they knew Him—not, as in the counsels of His electing love; in verse 24, He looked at them as preserved by His truth and Spirit in the midst of deceit and corruption; in verse 31, He takes a last look at them, gathered into the kingdom, or to their loved Zion, from all places of their dispersion.
There is a natural unforced character in this interpretation of “the elect” of this chapter, which, I feel, commends it. But it has more to rest on than that.
In verses 29-30, the Lord had passed rapidly through the scene of judgments or the return of the Son of Man. Its precursors—the darkening, and falling, and shaking of the powers and ordinances of heaven, and the mourning of the tribes of the earth. Its execution—the well-known figure of “coming in the clouds” (Matt. 26:6464Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. (Matthew 26:64); Rev. 1:77Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. (Revelation 1:7)). And now its results—the gathering of the elect, His mind stretching out to that feature of these results, for the comfort of those whom, in their trials and in other parts of their history, as we saw, He had been previously looking at.
But beside, a “great trumpet” had been foretold by the prophet, as the instrument of gathering the scattered election home to the land (Isa. 27:12-1312And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel. 13And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord in the holy mount at Jerusalem. (Isaiah 27:12‑13) Sept.). and, to a great extent, the very language of the Lord here seems taken from that of the prophet Zechariah. (See Zech. 2:66Ho, ho, come forth, and flee from the land of the north, saith the Lord: for I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven, saith the Lord. (Zechariah 2:6) Sept.) And as Moses and the prophets had spoken of the dispersion of Israel for their sins in all parts of the earth, or to the four winds, it is natural that Jesus should speak of their restoration in the same or commensurate terms (Deut. 28:6464And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone. (Deuteronomy 28:64); Isa. 11:1212And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. (Isaiah 11:12); Ezek. 17:2121And all his fugitives with all his bands shall fall by the sword, and they that remain shall be scattered toward all winds: and ye shall know that I the Lord have spoken it. (Ezekiel 17:21)). And further, the Lord had often desired their gathering, as He tells us (see Matt. 23:3737O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! (Matthew 23:37)), and now He anticipates that gathering with assurance.
Besides, there is not a thought of resurrection here; and we know that those that are alive of the heavenly family shall not come without those that sleep. And their coming will not be the fruit of any “mission” (“he shall send his angels”), but in a moment, being changed or raised, they ascend on the Lord reaching the air from heaven with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. And I do not believe the mention of “angels” interferes with this, because of the extended use, not only of those creatures or servants themselves in the accomplishing of divine purposes, but in the extended use of the term in a figurative or secondary sense. And angels (Isa. 18:22That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled! (Isaiah 18:2)) are expressly used in relation to the gathering of Israel.
Well, then, I surely believe that it is far more easy and natural, and according to all scriptural analogy, to interpret this verse of the same elect ones as had been spoken of in verse 22. I do not force this conclusion on another. No. In this department of truth there are many things hard to be understood, and we should have at this day among us, I am thoroughly assured, the materials and the spirit of purer and more heavenly communion, had we been more modest and less urgent on those “doubtful disputations.” I can quite believe that the perfect wisdom of the Spirit has judged it well to leave a certain indistinctness upon those distant details, valuing, as He surely and blessedly does, something far more than our mere agreement in opinion upon them. O that the Lord may shed among us the spirit of a more intimate and personal communion with Himself and each other! But in its place and measure, I am ready to welcome knowledge of these things and inquiry into them, and, therefore, go on to look at verse 40.
The taking and the leaving, whatever precise or prophetic sense may belong to these words or acts, morally convey the great and serious truth, that this day, the day of the Son of Man, will be a discerning day, a day of separation between the righteous and the evil. And the chief value, the great moral power, of the teaching lies in that, and in that we are, of course, agreed.
But I do further believe, that supposing the “taking” refer to the righteous, it is the righteous ones who, like Noah and Lot, are secured only for the earthly places. Noah entered the ark, and Lot was borne away from Sodom, I grant, before the judgments came. They were taken and the rest left for destruction. But they were earthly ones. I think, however, beyond this, that the passage affords evidence that the “taking” intimates judgment and not security, and the “leaving” intimates outliving and not destruction. Luke has the word “escape” and “stand” (Luke 21:3636Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man. (Luke 21:36)), and that simply and naturally conveys to me that those who are left are a people that have escaped the operation of this terrible day, and still stand as in their place, unmoved before the Son of Man. And the figures employed intimate strongly that the taking is a judicial or hostile act. The figure of an eagle coming upon a carcass—the figure of a thief coming into a house—the figure of a snare catching a man—the type of the flood coming to bear away the old world: all these intimate to me strongly that our blessed Master had judgment rather than security in His mind when He spoke of “taking.”
One objection is made to this, which appears strong, that the verb is changed; that in verse 39 it is αἴρω and in verse 40 παραλαμβάνω. But I find the very same thing in John 19:15-1615But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. 16Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away. (John 19:15‑16). There the Jews call on Pilate to take away Jesus — αἴρω —but the moment he allows them to do their pleasure, and act towards Him just as they wished, they παρέλαβον Jesus. This is surely at the very least enough to check confidence on this point.
My own conviction is this, though I am no critical scholar at all, that the quality of the act, signified by the verb παραλαμβάνω, is to be determined simply by the quality of the agent. It means (does it not?) assuming or taking to one’s self. When the Lord Jesus descends to receive His saints to Himself (παραλαμβάνω, John 14:33And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (John 14:3)), that taking or receiving is surely unto joy and glory; but when the judicial Son of Man comes to take, it is, I believe, to carry off in vengeance.
These are my thoughts on the force of this verse. I am ready to say, as I did upon verse 31, I press nothing. I admit that some indistinctness may advisedly be left on this subject, for it is morally healthful for our souls, both to be in daily desire and expectation of Jesus, and yet armed with the daily mind of those who are ready to suffer death at the hand of any enemy of His name. My grief is, that saints are sedulously schooled or tortured into conclusions, that necessity is laid on them to make up their minds on these things, and that that zeal which works division is put forth in the service of peculiar opinions. “In many things we offend all.”
I paused at verse 44, for I judge that from Matthew 24:4545Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? (Matthew 24:45) to 25:30 we have only beautiful and striking illustrations of the great moral principles which had been previously enforced, such as watching, because ignorant of the time.
In Matthew 24:3131And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matthew 24:31)-40, however, the Lord appears to me to resume the scene. In Matthew 24:3131And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matthew 24:31), He had spoken of a “gathering,” having brought down His teaching to the gathering or assembling of the scattered Israel. Now He resumes the scene, and exhibits the gathering of the Gentiles, or settling the nations in the kingdom. I believe there is no resurrection here, as there had been none in Matthew 24:3131And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matthew 24:31). I believe it is impossible to say that the goats or the reprobate will rise into the air to meet the descending Lord, and there be judged. I believe it is impossible to say that the throne of the King, before which a mixed multitude are to be brought at one and the same time, can be till the Lord have actually returned and been seated on the earth again. The judgment between “cattle and cattle” is on earth (Ezek. 34). There was much in this to sustain the disciples, His believing people, to whom the Lord was speaking. There was sure promise of His return with His rewards as the Master, and with Himself as the Bridegroom. But I do not find, in the whole of this discourse, that which necessarily instructed them in heavenly glories, or necessarily intimated their rapture into the heavens. In John, as they are retiring from the supper, He speaks still more fully, and plainly tells them of mansions in heavenly places. But there He originated the discourse, and in spirit was in heaven; here they originate the discourse, and in spirit, in thought, in intelligence and associations, were on earth.
If the mind hold these or any other thoughts of God and His counsels before it, may the spirit within ponder them, and turn them to godly exercise of heart and conscience! May they not float before the mind’s eye, beloved, as ideas or images, but dwell within the seeing and hearing of the soul with power! Amen.