Has it not been clearly shown that the Lord Jesus is, in all this, speaking of disciples connected with the Temple, with Judaea, with Jerusalem, and not of Christians? Take these further proofs of it. He says, “Pray that your flight be not on the sabbath day.” The Lord's day is our day, the first day of the week. The Jew rightly and properly keeps Jehovah's sabbaths. As to this, there are languages in Europe more correct than what we hear more commonly spoken around us.
The Pope's tongue, the Italian, keeps up the right distinction; it always speaks of Saturday as the sabbath day, and Sunday as the Lord's day. How curious that it should be so, where such blind darkness reigns on almost everything else!
In these lands there has long been a great deal of confusion as to the sabbath and the Lord's day. Let none be offended at the remark; for there is nothing lowering to either, The Lord's day differs from the sabbath, not by a lower but by a higher degree of sanctity, not by leaving Christians free to do their own will on that day, but by calling them out to do the Lord's will always, by a complete separation to the Lord's glory, the holy services of divine praise, in works. of faith and labors of love. In short, the Lord's day differs essentially from the sabbath day in that it is the day of grace, not of law, and the day of new creation, not of the old.
The consequence of this exhibits very important differences indeed in practice.
Suppose a Christian had the strength to walk 20 miles on the Lord's day, and to preach the gospel six or seven times, would he be guilty of transgression of the law? It is to be hoped that not a single person perhaps in this room would venture to think so; yet if he is under the Sabbath law, what can absolve from the obligations of that law? All under the law are bound within defined limits. Are you free to use the sabbath day in indefinite labor even for what you know to be the active purposes of goodness?
I grant you the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath; but are you the Son of man? are you Lord of the sabbath? You cannot do freely what you count ever so good; you are under stringent regulations as to that day. If the sabbath, be your day, keep it as such; if you, a Christian, have to do with the Lord's day, seek to understand its meaning, and to be true to it. I say, then, that the Lord's day is a day of consecration to the worship and to the work of the Lord. It is not the last day of a laborious week, a day of rest that you share with your ox or your ass. It is a day to be devoted to the Lord Jesus, to communion with His own in the world. Nor is there sin in the most strenuous labor for souls then; on the contrary such labor in the Lord is delightful wherever it is found.
But these Jewish disciples contemplated here are told to pray that the time for their precipitate flight should not be in the winter nor on the sabbath day; for the one would be inconvenient from its inclemency, and on the other they could not go farther than a sabbath-day's journey. But how could this affect us as Christians? Even if once Jews, we are no longer under such restrictions. The Lord is speaking not of Christians but of future Jewish disciples, connected with Jewish ritual, and filled with Jewish hopes.
Further, it is said, “There shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved.” All this is plain enough. It is not a question of the new life but of the old. They should then live and be the subjects of the blessed reign and glory when the Lord comes. It is earthly glory here, not in heaven. For the elect's sake those days should be shortened.
“Then, if any man shall say unto you, lo! here is Christ, or there, believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they should deceive the very elect.” “Behold! I have told you before. Wherefore, 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.” It is clear and certain that “the elect” here are Jewish. What would be the effect of such sayings on your mind, suppose one were to tell you that the Lord was in London or Vienna? You would pity the poor fellow, and say that he ought to be sent to a lunatic asylum; you would feel that he could not be in his right senses, except he were an impostor. You, as a Christian, could not be deceived by such rumors for an instant.
But it is clear that the Lord Jesus supposes considerable danger for the disciples here. In fact, being Jewish, not Christian, they might be deceived by the cry that He was here or there on earth; whereas no Christian could be in danger. But the Jewish disciples were exposed to it. They were looking for the Lord's coming to the earth; they know that the Lord's feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives.
It is clear, then, that the Jews might be taken in by such deceit. Not so the Christian. He knows that he will meet the Lord in the heavens, and that he will be taken up out of this world into the air to meet the Lord on high. But the deceits in question are addressed to such only as expect to meet the Lord on the earth. The whole of the scene thus far consists of the Lord's instruction to disciples connected with Jerusalem and Judaea, and has nothing at all to do with the Christians looking to join the Lord above. But here again is the reason why they are not to listen to false Christs. “For 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.” Learned men have applied all this to the Roman conquest. But the Roman army did not come out of the east, as the lightning is said to do here, nor did it shine unto the west: the very reverse would be a more apt figure, had the Romans been meant. So correctly has the Lord Jesus guarded against the misinterpretations of men.
I deny that the prophecy is obscure or ambiguous. There is no uncertain sound in the Bible. I grant you that there is no book so profound as the word of God, but this does not hinder its clearness for the simplest. It is meant for the highest as well as the lowest. If it were of use only for one class, to the exclusion of the other, it could not be the word of God; for what is of God must suit men in all conditions. I speak, of course, of believers: but still, even if the soul were in the densest natural ignorance, there is everything in the Bible to enlighten and establish such an one. If he be one who dives ever so much into the depths of God's mind, like the apostle Paul, the Bible is still beyond him. “Now we know in part,” Said this very man, one of the greatest of its inspired writers. How truly divine is all this! Is it really so with any other book? If you are a man of ability, you may soon fathom another man's measure, but never the depths of the Bible, though free to search all. The fact is, you only begin to find out how little you know of the Bible when you are really advancing in the knowledge of it.
There is no discipline so wholesome as this, because, on the one hand, you are strengthened and encouraged, on the other hand you are humbled. This is exactly what the soul wants.
The Lord, then, has given these firm standing points, these landmarks, as it were, in the prophecy, which hinder us from being carried away by every wind of theory. We can see clearly what the Lord has set before us. I have not knowingly passed over anything material. There is no violence done to a word here. I wish to give nothing but a clear, distinct, and positive impression of the mind of the Lord as given in His own words.
It is next said, “Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” Now, if you apply this to the church—to the Christian—what will you be able to make of it? Is the church the carcass? I have heard something still more dreadful. Men have not been wanting who say that the Lord is the reference! Such are the ideas expressed by such an attempt to interpret the prophecy on, false ground. Learned men, including some of the Fathers taught this; and a great many of the moderns follow in their wake. The last notion I must beg to consider as very great irreverence as well as grossly mistaken. Understand me! I do not wish to fasten anything unfair upon any of them, but it appears to me a crude and unworthy interpretation, no matter how (according to the Christian scheme) they take the carcass, whether applying it to the church or to the Lord Is the church a corpse? I believe it to be a living body. And the Lord is not regarded as a body dead or even alive; but as the Head. But the Lord a carcass! What are they dreaming about?
The whole effort is false. There is no getting a consistent meaning out of the passage when interpreted of the church: the moment you apply it to the Jewish people, it becomes strikingly true. For the mass of the Jews will then be apostate, and the eagles or vultures who come together are figures of the divine judgments executed on the guilty people by the nations of the earth; but whatever may be the instruments, they are judgments of God executed by Him. If the Christians be the carcass, they are the object of the judgment, and there the eagles, or the executors of judgment, are gathered together. But this is not at all the relation of the Lord's coming to the Christian. Nor can the Christians be the eagles or instruments of divine vengeance, any more than the carcass, without abandoning all the truth and character of their calling. The changed saints undoubtedly will go up to meet the Lord; but is He then to be the carcass, and are the church the eagles? Thus, in such a scheme, you have only the choice of one evil less or greater than another; and it is generally thus with an erroneous interpretation. Apply it to the object the Lord had in view, and all is clear. This is the test of scriptural truth: whenever you press a false interpretation, the general testimony of scripture is dislocated.
Then the Lord adds, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn.” It is not here the believers with joy going up to meet the. Lord, but the tribes of the earth mourning: “And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And 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.”
Here many lay great stress upon gathering His “elect.” You are too quick, my friends. The “elect” do not necessarily mean Christians If you speak of elect now, it is so; but had God no “elect” before there were Christians? There were elect Gentiles. Take Job for one, and his friends probably also the same; were they not elect men? Melchisedek and others, were not they elect? Need I enumerate the elect of Israel in the past? We find clearly elect Gentiles as well as Jews and Christians. When we read about Christians, then the elect must be so explained; if we read about Jews, then the phrase applies to a Jewish election; and so with the nations. We must be governed by the context. As the Lord here is clearly speaking about Israel, the sense should not be ambiguous. When we have “his elect” named, He means the elect of those described, that is, of Israel. This is not at all to bring in arbitrary rules, but in fact a very plain and necessary principle.
Let us suppose a case in common life. If you go into a crockery shop, and choose out some of the things there, everybody understands how far the choice extends: to the seed shop next door it does not apply. Your choice or the chosen, cannot be fairly said to be uncertain because you speak of it in two different places. The word applies equally to the things chosen in both shops. It is all simple enough in everyday matters; and so it is with the Scriptures.
The Lord, I repeat, in all this context is speaking about Israel and their hopes. Consequently “his elect” must be interpreted according to the object in view. These elect ones are to be gathered “from one end of heaven to the other,” not for heaven but on earth. (Compare Isa. 27)
Then “learn the parable of the fig tree.” The fig tree is a well-known symbol of Israel as a nation. This confirms what has been already said. In the Gospel of Luke, where the Lord takes a view of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews; He reverts to this very symbol, but enlarged remarkably. He says “the fig tree, and all the trees.” He does not speak of the latter in Matthew, because He is only in this part looking at the Jew; but in Luke He is looking at the Gentile as well as the Jew, and hence adds, “and all the trees.” (Compare Luke 21 as the authority for this statement.)
“Now learn the parable of the fig tree. When its branches are yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh; so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.” Now Mark the phrase “all these things” —namely, from the first troubles down to the last; and the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Clearly “this generation” does not mean, what some impute to it, a Mere period of thirty years; or a man's life. The phrase means, what it frequently does in Scripture, a line continued by certain moral tokens entirely independent of length of time. Hence we find in the Psalms very particularly this use of “generation.” I will give you one text which proves it in the most convincing manner. In Psalm 12: 9 we read “Thou shalt keep them, O Jehovah thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever.” This generation is supposed to go on, and it is an evil generation, a generation which has no faith, a stubborn, Christ-rejecting generation. “This generation,” the Christ-rejecting race of the Jews, is not to pass away till all these things be fulfilled. Hence the same generation which crucified the Lord of glory is going on still, and will, till He come again in the clouds of heaven.
Some of you, I dare say, have read a notorious article in a respectable Review, which boasts that the Jews of the present day are really what they were in the days of our Savior—a noble-hearted generous race (though they made that mistake!) as compared with their rude forefathers in the days of Moses, etc. Alas for the judgment of man! What a confession that “this generation” has not passed away! They are still the same proud, self-righteous Christ-rejecting race they were then.
[W.K.]
(Continued from page 272)
(To be continued)