Another part of our chapter around which immense misunderstanding has gathered is that verse in which the Lord says, “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto nations: and then shall the end come” (ver. 14).
How often in sermons, and at missionary meetings has this been used as an incentive to the preaching of the gospel abroad! How many earnest servants of Christ have gone to remote corners of the earth under the impression that they were promoting the Lord's coming by carrying the gospel where it had never been before! Such devoted labor will no doubt be accepted by the Master and richly rewarded, but nevertheless, so far as it rests on our text, it is based on an entire misconception.
In the first place, “the end” here is not identical with the Lord's coming for His saints, or the end of the church period. It is “the end” about which the disciples had just been inquiring— “the end of the age.” 1 Thessalonians 4 shows that the Lord comes and takes suddenly to Himself those of the church who then are alive and remain; and we have already seen that when, thus, the fullness of the Gentiles is come in, divine dealings with Israel are resumed. Jewish matters, now in abeyance, then come into position again. Many things were altered by the cross. The relations of Jehovah with Israel were broken off and suspended. But when the church-period terminates, the course of “the age,” disrupted by the rejection of Messiah, commences again to run: the end of that age, precedent to the glorious age of the Messiah, is “the end” which the Lord was discoursing about. The church is, as it were, an intercalation between the breaking off and the re-commencement of dealings with Israel.
Secondly, the gospel to be preached prior to “the end of the age” is not the present gospel. The reader may be startled to hear that there are two gospels; but as a fact there are more than two spoken of in scripture. Israel in the wilderness had a gospel declared to them of a land flowing with milk and honey—type of heaven to the Christian; and Hebrews (4:2) says that “to us has a gospel been preached as well as unto them.” The twelve apostles had a gospel to preach after the Lord's resurrection. And again, Paul, by the Spirit of God, speaks of what he designates “my gospel “: that is, Paul, called later than “the twelve,” had revealed to him further and fuller truth than was embodied in the commission of “the twelve” (Romans 2:16; 16; Galatians 1:11; 2:4; Ephesians 3:2-4). The very text with which we are dealing distinctly implies that there are various gospels, for it says particularly, “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached,” etc. The language of scripture is exact, and many a misconception is formed, many a doubt is thrown on scripture, simply through inattention to its actual words. So here. The Lord specifically declares that “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness unto all the nations, and then shall the end come.” Through inattention to the terms men have come to think that the present gospel was meant.
What then is the “gospel of the kingdom"? Certainly not the gospel as we have it now—the gospel of full redemption—for redemption through the death and resurrection of our Lord had not been accomplished, and therefore could not be preached. What then was it? It will be necessary to trace it slightly through scripture. So early as the time of David, the kingdom forms the subject of prophecy. “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession” (Psalm 2:6-8). Needless to say, this is prophetic, going in its terms far beyond David, Solomon, or any other than the Messiah. Here is a king decreed to be set upon the holy hill of Zion, who is also Son of God, begotten (as to His humanity) in time; One who is to have the nations (Gentiles) for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. To the godly Israelite who pored over the scriptures this and other Messianic prophecies were familiar. Thus Nathanael, the moment that the displayed omniscience of Jesus brings to his mind who the wondrous Person is who stands before him, immediately recognizes Jesus as the promised King, and applies to Him the very terms of the second Psalm, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel” (John 1:48, 49).
In the book of Daniel the kingdom is very distinctly foretold. “The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed,” etc. (2: 44). “I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven... and there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (7:13, 14).
When we see how this magnificent kingdom was the goal of Israel's hopes, light is thrown upon that which was the burden of John the Baptist's testimony, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” That was the Baptist's gospel. Jesus took up and continued it after that John was delivered up. “From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2; 4:12, 17). In passing, note the character of this gospel. A mighty kingdom had indeed been predicted for Israel, and now it was imminent. But it was not to be the mere advent of power to deliver the people from their Roman oppressors. The condition they were in was chastisement for their sins, and repentance was called for. Jehovah was not going to bring them into blessing as they were: that would have been unholy. It would have been the acceptance and sanction of their sins and their sinful state. This moral character of the kingdom was what made the preaching a stumbling-block to the Jews. They would have been glad indeed to have been delivered from the power of Rome, and set in their due place at the head of the nations. But to enter in through the strait gate of repentance they would not. So is it ever with the natural heart. Men to-day would hail a millennium of delights brought in simply by power. But repentance!—without which God, being holy, cannot meet them—this is foreign to their hearts and repugnant to their will. The sermon on the mount accordingly gives the character of the subjects of the kingdom. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:2). Both the twelve and the seventy were sent out with the same message: “And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 10:7; Luke 10:9).
This slight tracing of the subject of “the kingdom” illustrates the specific force of the Lord's words, “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world.” The expression is not vague. It is not “the gospel,” nor “a gospel,” but definitely, “This gospel of the kingdom.”
A point important to observe (as there is misconception with regard to it) is that “the kingdom of heaven” is not heaven. It is just the contrary. It is the earth, but the earth under the rule of heaven. “The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom,” that is, over the earth. The Son of man comes “with the clouds of heaven, and there was given him a kingdom that all peoples and nations and languages should serve him.” Nations and languages are not in heaven; they belong to the earth. But the kingdom is now in mystery, because the King has been rejected and is concealed in heaven. The establishment of the kingdom in power as prophesied, and as it will yet be, is now in abeyance, and the present form of the kingdom is the word sown, and left as a system of truth on earth. This was all fully explained by the parable of the sower and the other parables of Matthew 13, which are stated to be the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven (ver. 11), consequent upon the rejection of Christ by Israel (vers. 14, 15). This teaching was prior to the statement about the keys in chap. 16. It was of the kingdom in this form that the keys were conferred on Peter, who accordingly opened the door to the Jews by his preaching in Acts 2, and afterward formally admitted the Gentiles in the person of Cornelius and his house (see Acts 10:44-48). But heaven itself is another thing. And Peter has no more to do with the admission of a soul to heaven than has my reader.
The kingdom of heaven is not spoken of in the Acts or the Epistles. Indeed the term is found in Matthew only. “The kingdom of God” spoken of elsewhere is not quite the same thing. It is a larger expression and finds its fullness only in heaven. Hence in one place in scripture it is spoken of as heaven— “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50); but the phrase “kingdom of heaven” is never so employed. That is the kingdom of heaven over the earth. In the kingdom of heaven there will be flesh and blood, but into the kingdom of God flesh and blood cannot enter.
We have seen that the gospel of the kingdom was preached by John the Baptist, and by our Lord, and—before the cross—by the twelve apostles and by the seventy disciples, whom He commissioned and sent throughout the land. But, except for the little band whom He in grace gathered around Himself, the preaching ended in His total rejection. Israel was nationally apostate, when they cried, “We have no king but Caesar,” and demanded a felon's death for the Lord of glory (John 19:15). An offer of repentance to Israel was still held out by the preaching of Peter in Acts 3 consequent upon the glorification of Jesus and the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. But the offer was futile as regards the nation. They ratified the crucifixion of Christ by stoning His witness Stephen, whose face shone as an angel's while he bore testimony to the glory of Jesus (Acts 6:15; 7:54-60). They had already cast the Heir out of the vineyard and slain Him according to Matthew 21:39; and now, in the murder of His servant Stephen they fulfilled the other parable, and “sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14).
The consequence of all this was the abrogation of relations between Jehovah and Israel as the chosen nation, the detailed results of which that unhappy people are reaping to the present hour. “His blood be upon us and on our children” was their own awful imprecation against themselves (Matthew 27:25). But Israel being nationally laid aside, God now in wondrous forbearance sends out the gospel to Jew and Gentile alike. The message is intrinsically the same to each, though if there be a preference it is to the Jew— “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). But this is not the gospel of the kingdom. It is sovereign and free grace to every man (Colossians 1:23).
There is yet another misapprehension lying across the face of this scripture, which it were well to remove. The Lord said, “This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled” (Matthew 24:34; Mark 13:32; Luke 21:33). Many have taken this to mean that the prophecy was to be fulfilled in the lifetime of persons then present in the world. And this erroneous supposition has entailed two further errors. Rationalists have based upon it a claim that the prophecy has broken down, and others have put a strained interpretation upon it in order to reconcile the seeming contradiction. It has been said, as an explanation, that the coming of the Son of man in the chapter was no more than death—an hypothesis which will not bear examination, yet it was the common teaching in pulpits about fifty years ago. But had it been so that would not remove the difficulty, because not only is the coming of the Son of man to take place before that generation passes, but also “all” the things foretold in the prophecy.
When, however, the proper meaning is seen, the supposed contradiction vanishes and all is clear. It is a positive error to take the word “generation” in the meaning referred to. There is an obvious principle of interpretation which indeed is recognized in law, that when a word has different meanings that one must be adopted which carries out the intention, not one which frustrates the intention. Now any person who turns to a good English dictionary will at once see that the word “generation” has a variety of meanings. Webster gives seven; and while one is the sense referred to, namely, “the mass of beings living at one period,” another is “race, family, kind.” This latter is the true sense of “generation” in Matthew 24:34. What the Lord really says is that the Jewish race—and more especially that moral character of it then present—should not pass away till all those things should be fulfilled.
The existence of that generation—the Jews dispersed amongst all nations and yet separate from them—is indeed one of the wonders of the world. Bishop Butler refers to it as “the appearance of a standing miracle, in the Jews remaining a distinct people in their dispersion.” He says, “The Jewish nation and government were destroyed in a very remarkable manner, and the people carried away captive and dispersed through the most distant countries, in which state of dispersion they have remained fifteen hundred years; and that they remain a numerous people, united amongst themselves and distinguished from the rest of the world as they were in the days of Moses by the profession of His law, and everywhere looked upon in a manner which one scarce knows how distinctly to express but in the words of the prophetic account of it, given so many ages before it came to pass: Thou shalt became an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee" (Deuteronomy 28:37).” Here we have the fulfillment of the Lord's words, “This generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled.”
If we take the word in the original Greek (γενεά), either in the New Testament or the Septuagint, we shall find it abundantly used in both senses. Let us look at the latter, that is, the sense in which it ought to be taken in our text. But remark that what is meant is not merely the race of the Jews, but that adverse moral character of it which stood around and resisted Jesus in His life and pursued Him to a cruel death. As another has said, “The non-believing race of the Jews is not to pass away till all these things have taken place. Thus the same generation which crucified the Lord of glory is going on still, and will, till He comes again in the clouds of heaven."
Now for the scriptural use. In Deuteronomy 32 Moses is recounting the faithfulness of Jehovah and the unfaithfulness of Israel throughout their whole history from its commencement, and he says: “They have corrupted themselves they are a perverse and crooked generation” (ver. 5). Then, referring to the present era when Israel is cast out by Jehovah, and which has already lasted for centuries, “I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith” (ver. 20).
Palpably, here “generation” is used for the people or nation of Israel. Of those termed a perverse and froward “generation” in vers. 5, 20, it is said in ver. 28, they are a “nation” void of counsel. Thus the word is used as the synonym of “nation.”
Again, “Jehovah hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath. For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith Jehovah” ( Jeremiah 7:29, 30). “Death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family” (chap. 8:3). Here the word is properly rendered “family” without any limitation of time. In the very discourse which the Lord concluded in Matthew 23, He uses the word “generation” in an extended sense— “That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias whom ye slew between the temple and the altar” (ver. 35). He addresses them nationally, and then adds, “Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this 'generation '“ (ver. 36).
Parkhurst, in his Lexicon, gives as a meaning of γενεά “Men of like quality and disposition, though of neither one place nor age “; and this is amply borne out— “Thou shalt keep them, O Jehovah, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever “(Psalm 12:7). In this text “generation” is obviously not limited to the set of people at any one time upon the earth. Again, “God is in the generation of the righteous” (Psalm 14:5). “The generation of them that seek thee” (24: 6). “If I say, I will speak thus; behold I should offend against the generation of thy children” (73:15). “There is a generation that curseth their father, and doth not bless their mother. There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness. There is a generation, 0 how lofty are their eyes! and their eyelids are lifted up. There is a generation whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth” (Proverbs 30:11-14). In these verses a certain moral character or kind of persons is implied. More evidence might be adduced, but is scarcely necessary. When the Lord said, “This generation shall not pass,” He referred to the Jews, both ethnically and morally—as in the apt phrase already quoted, “the non-believing race of the Jews.”
“This generation,” then, will continue until the whole prophecy of Matthew 24 is fulfilled. Indeed the Jews will be far more prominent as we shall see, in the closing scenes of the age, than ever they have been in the centuries of Christianity.
[E. J. T.]
(To be continued)