There were with the Lord Jesus on the Mount of Olives,
a few days before He suffered, a portion of that Church which He desired to
instruct: whatever He then said to Peter, Andrew, James, and John, was not
addressed to them for themselves merely, but to them as a portion of that one
body to which, amongst other endowments, there had been given corporate hopes;
that is, expectations not confined to individuals merely, not mere promises to
be fulfilled to persons then living, but a hope belonging to a body as such,
the visible accomplishment of which should take place in the days of certain of
that body living in some one age. And thus the Lord Jesus in that prophetic
discourse applies the term “ye” and “you”, not to the four
disciples who had questioned Him as individuals, but to the Church of the
first-born as one body, and having one hope, of which those four were
representatives. Thus when He says, “When ye therefore shall see the
abomination of desolation” (Matthew 24:15),
“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; for as the
lightning”, etc. (verses 26,27), He specially, of course, regards those to whom
His words would be applicable from the age in which they should live, and from
their location and circumstances. But lest any should say that these things
related to persons then living, merely as individuals, or lest in any other way
they should avoid the force of the corporate “ye”, our Lord in the same
discourse adds, “What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch” (Mark 13:37).
Now the questions put to the Lord Jesus by the
disciples, and His reply to them, had to do with His coming in glory. They say,
“What shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world [age]?” [1] (Matthew 24:3)
If, then, we would be rightly instructed as to these things, we are called on
to take heed to His reply. In His answer, He first tells His disciples of many
and various intervening events; deceivers should arise; there should be
commotions amongst the nations-- persecutions of the faithful servants of
Christ--and the preaching of the Gospel should be carried out as a witness
amongst all nations: all this must precede the end, and, in fact, must continue
up to the end. The words, “the end is not yet” (verse 6)... and “then
shall the end come” (verse 14), are of especial importance and weight as to
this.
Whatever be the
moral bearing of the hope of the coming of our Lord, He regarded it as
being in no wise impaired by the knowledge which He himself gave of events that
would intervene; for He taught such preceding events in answer to the inquiry
of the disciples. If, then, we were to say that a belief in intervening events
interferes with the hope of the coming of the Lord, or contradicts it, we must
have adopted some incorrect opinion respecting it. The point now to be noticed
is, not whether certain predicted events have now been accomplished, but
whether the knowledge of such intervening events dims the hope of the second
appearing of Christ. I shall have occasion subsequently to notice some of the
particulars of this prophetic discourse: it is evident, on simply reading the
inspired record of what our Lord then taught, that it sets before the believing
people of Christ the hope that He shall himself come “in the clouds of heaven
with power and great glory”; and then “He shall send forth His angels with a
great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the
four winds, from the one end of heaven to the other”; that before this coming
there “shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the
world to this time, no, nor ever shall be”; and that the parable of the fig
tree is given us that we may learn how to watch and to wait. We have, in fact,
to expect the Lord as He has promised to come, and in no other way.
[1] It is certainly a question whether we might not
have made more use of 'age' in our version [for aión]:...'age' may sound
to us inadequate now; but it is quite possible that, so used, it would little
by little have expanded, and acquired a larger, deeper meaning than it now
possesses.”--Abp. Trench; Synonyms of the N. Test. Part the Second.
1863, p.32.
