The Lord, having thus completely discomfited them in all their assaults, next proceeds to attack them in turn, and to hew them down root and branch. He first acknowledges their divine commission, but only the more fully to expose their unfaithfulness; then crying bitter woes upon them, He shows that they were not merely faithless servants but fierce foes, not simply untrustworthy guides, but false seducers; sepulchers truly, but sepulchers fall of corruption within children of those who slew the prophets, but surpassing the measure of their fathers; offspring of vipers doubtless, but themselves serpents.
Showing thus the tree to be not only barren, but poisonous, the Lord reveals Himself as the One from whom all blessing must be derived, and that the characteristics of those who should exercise authority in the thing which He was about to set up would not be exaltation but humility, and that their portion would not be either to slay the prophets or build their tombs but to be themselves slain and persecuted, resulting however in an overflowing measure of judgment upon the persecutors. And as He began with owning them in the place of God's appointment, so He concludes with revoking that appointment until a time of repentance and acknowledgment of Himself, leaving the temple as a thing that could be in no wise cleansed or restored, a charnel-house unfit for a clean man to enter, like its owners, fair to look on without, but within full of dead men's bones; and predicting its complete overthrow, thus including all in a common ruin, the judgment of Gehenna upon the heads of the system, the curse of Cain upon the generation, desolation upon the city, and destruction upon the temple.
The slaughter of Zacharias is typically prophetical of the slaying of John the Baptist, who was the last of the witnessing prophets of God slain for righteousness' sake up to that time. The circumstances of the time were identical in each case. The temple had been renewed just previous to their ministry with much of its former magnificence, and the ceremonies of the law restored and performed by men who walked blamelessly before the Lord in all His commandments and ordinances; but that generation had passed away, and nothing remained but an outside witness against a house that for God had become an empty shell. Indeed the judicial murder of Jesus was the final act of violence by which the false sought to get rid of the true, prolonged doubtless and consummated in effect by the rejection of the witness of the Holy Spirit in the church.
From this time the earthly system as owned of God is entirely lost sight of, and the Lord passes at once to reveal the new and heavenly kingdom, of which He was Lord and King, taking up the signs which should accompany its manifestation after the complete obliteration of the former thing, not one stone being left upon another.
These signs therefore are to be looked for immediately the Jew comes into responsibility before God as His witness upon earth, after the utter annihilation of that which had formerly ruled him. The old thing was not thoroughly leveled to the ground until Titus destroyed the temple and carried the Jews away into captivity. The Jew will not be the witness for God as a Jew until the church has gone from the earth to be with her Lord and Bridegroom forever: for before God's King shall be set upon His holy hill of Zion and declare the decree that He is in that day, the day of resurrection the begotten Son of God, these birththroes shall come to pass. Many shall come, saying, “I am the Christ;” wars and rumors of wars, but this is not the end. Nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, are but, the beginning of pangs; tribulation, and slaughter, and hatred, from all the nations shall follow, and then many among themselves would be offended, and deliver up, and hate, one another; false prophets should mislead, lawlessness prevail, and love grow cold; but the one enduring to the end should be the saved; and after the good news of the coming kingdom had been declared to the heathen and the uttermost parts of the earth, then should the end of that age come.
Again, the Lord describes another set of signs parallel to these: first, the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in a holy place, set there by the false king, doubtless the Antichrist, in the midst of the week; then shall follow the flight of the disciples and the final tribulation in the land, and immediately after the sun shall be darkened, the moon not give her light, the stars 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, to be followed by His coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and the gathering of. His elect. Further all these shall come to pass ere that generation shall have passed away; thus clearly showing that men should be occupying an exactly similar position when these things occur as they did then.
The Jew shall be in the possession of the land, the bulk in unbelief, but in their midst a remnant of faith. The Gentile shall have dominion in the laud, upholding the false king, the Antichrist, with whom, for the sake of temporal advantage, the worldly Jew will make a covenant, but their trust put to utter shame and to their own destruction when the scourge of God's wrath shall go through the land.
That the time of the Lord's coming, the completion of the age, and the introduction of the new kingdom should correspond to and be a part of the time that then was, is the clear teaching of the parable and the direct statement which it illustrates. When the Jew, as God's fig-tree for fruit-bearing and witness upon earth, withered because barren, should become broken in heart and should turn to the Lord—the branch become tender and put forth leaves in the power of a renewed life—then is the summer, the harvest, the end near—at the doors.
This generation will not have passed sway until all these things shall have taken place. The heaven and the earth—the heavenly and the earthly which shall intervene—shall pass away, but the word of the Lord not at all.
But as the days of Noah, and as the people, so shall the coming of the Son of man be: for when the professed sons of God should link themselves with the men of the earth, through the daughters of men and great results and much power and honor accrue, to the flesh thereby; when the natural man Enos— “a man” —should have passed away, the spiritual man “Enoch” — “dedicated” —have been taken—he was not, for God took him; when religious flesh should have reached its perfection and perished, Lamech— “strong” —777 years; When flesh in all its forms (Methuselah— “man of darts") should have been fully developed—666 (Rev. 13:1818Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. (Revelation 13:18)), and in the long-suffering of God permitted to overpass its limit three years; the time during which the bride is formed from the side of the sleeping Lord—then should the end of all flesh come before God. Even as the flood came and took all away, so also shall the coming of the Son of man be.
But it shall be a discriminating judgment. Two shall be in the field sowing seed—two shall be in the mill preparing bread—one is taken, the other left. Watch therefore, for ye know not in what hour your Lord comes. But if the master of the house had known the time of the thief's coming, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be dug through. Wherefore also not only watch, for ye know not the hour your Lord comes, but also be ready, for in that hour that ye think not the Son of man comes—to destroy the thief and restore His house; and meanwhile all the faithful bond-servant can do is to give the household food in season. He cannot repair the damage to the house. So doing, his Lord on coming shall set him over all His substance. But that evil servant, who takes occasion by the absence of his Lord, to live as in the night, in rioting, wantonness, and ill-treatment of his fellow-servants, while pretending to keep his Lord's charge, at the same time cultivating friendship with the world which lives in open enmity to his Lord and denial of His claims—the unexpected unknown judgment shall likewise come upon him and the own hour of darkness.
Having shown how a sifting judgment would come upon those who were in responsibility over His household inside the house, the Lord next proceeds to declare that a testing time would come upon those who waited to go in with Him to the marriage-feast; and here we get an intimation of something not within the scope of the truth the Lord then revealed. If a Bridegroom, then there was a bride having a place and portion altogether distinct from that of those who waited for the Bridegroom to go in with Him to the feast.
The witness for God upon earth is responsible for two things: to feed the household, and be a witness, a. light, in the world; and neither is a hardship, since the food for the one and the grace for the other are all treasured up in Christ, freely to be received and freely to be given. The bride of the Lamb—the body of Christ—the assembly of God in its earthly manifestation, and each member of the same, is responsible for these two things; and inasmuch as it has failed—that is, the professing system which has taken upon itself the name of God's assembly, and is therefore held responsible as such—therefore the, portion of the hypocrite and the foolish shall be its portion.
These first two parables reveal a nearer approach to church ground than the two which follow. The evil slave was responsible to his lord for feeding the household; the foolish virgin was responsible to the bridegroom for lighting him to the feast. The one dealt in heavenly truth, and the other waited for the heavenly Man. The one being set to “do,” and being glad in heart at his lord's delay, therefore did evil; the others, having nothing to do but simply to go forth and meet the bridegroom, were content to be outwardly like their companions, careless whether they would be for his honor at his coming.
(Continued from page 834.)