3. Such was the feeling of the Jews, God's people, toward their King, because He was the Son of God, Jehovah, and not a mere man. The one interpretation is that the carcass refers to all of the dead bodies that will be in the Valley of Megiddo after that great slaughter in the war there. A prescription of the duty of the day; See that ye be not troubled. "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" And because of that power he will deceive many.Jesus is warning over and over, don't be deceived. They preached that people should get ready for the inauguration of the messianic kingdom by believing in the King, Jesus. "Wherefore, behold," says He, after thus exposing and denouncing them, "I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city." Those two things having been blended by the disciples, as if the temple could not be overthrown without the destruction of the whole world, Christ, in replying to the whole question which had been put to him, reminded them that a long and melancholy succession of calamities was at hand, and that they must not hasten to seize the prize, before they had passed through many contests and dangers. (v) Some verses deal with the threats which will develop against the life and purity of the Church. Matthew, as we have seen, crowds into one scene all mention of the barren fig tree (ver. (29-41) Exhortations to watchfulness. So when you see these things that He has been speaking about; the world wars, the pestilences, the earthquakes, the false Christ, the tribulation, you'll know that His coming is at the door.The fig tree is used symbolically in the scripture to represent the nation Israel. To me it proves that the gospels are the fruit of divine purpose in all, distinctively in each. There are no prophetic signs needing fulfillment for this event. The event would be a repeat of the atrocities of Antiochus Epiphanes, only many times worse - an awful horror (GNB), a desolating sacrilege (RSV), an abomination that causes desolation (NIV) (Matthew 24:15-22; Luke 21:20-24; cf. It was the second time when there was this most ample invitation which left no excuse for man, that they not only would not come, going one to his farm, and another to his merchandize, but "the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully and slew them," This was not the character of the reception given to the apostles during our Lord's lifetime, but exactly what transpired after His death. This gives occasion for their crowning sin the utter rejection of all divine claims, in the death of the Son and Heir; for "they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him." At midnight, when all were asleep, there was a cry, "The bridegroom cometh: go ye out to meet him." Sometimes men have felt that history was plunging to an ever wilder and wilder chaos, that it is nothing more than "the record of the sins and follies of men." (applying to the Lord the congratulations of Psalms 118:1-29). Then shall the end come - The end of the Jewish economy; the destruction of the temple and city. This transition, in my judgment, leads from the part particularly devoted to the destinies of the Jewish people, and opens into that which concerns the Christian profession. How much, how little was man seen! And the result of the abounding iniquity is the love of many people has really grown cold for the things of the Lord. On the second mission, not the first, it is said, "All things are ready." (iii) They tell us that the coming of Christ will be a time of separation and of judgment, when he will gather to himself those who are his own. . It is His last communication to the disciples in view of the future; and this Matthew gives in a very full and rich manner. Men's knowledge, gifts, learning, eminent station, and long profession, will not secure them; but, notwithstanding these, many will be deceived; nothing but the almighty grace of God, pursuant to his eternal purpose, will be a protection. They essayed to pass through the watery walls, desiring thus to follow Israel to the other side. ( Matthew 24:3 ). Whatever may be the contrivances of Satan, and how numerous soever may be the multitudes which he carries away, yet the gospel will maintain its ground till it be spread through the whole world. Giving to the household their meat in due season. For Luke mentions another person. (ii) They tell us that that time will come with shattering suddenness on those who are immersed in material things. "O 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! "The gospel will be proclaimed to the whole inhabited world, for a testimony to all nations--and then the end will come. Do I forget that it is the day of resurrection? p. 235, 236. edit. Jesus does not say all nations will become Christian. The Sadducees denied resurrection, and put a case which to their mind involved insuperable difficulties. Thence he goes to sell Jesus. Jesus answered that the day would come when not one of these stones would be left standing upon the other--and Jesus was right. "The Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night" ( 1 Thessalonians 5:2). On this point, Bishop Newton goes on to say, That there is some probability that the Gospel was preached in the British nations by St. Simon the apostle; that there is much greater probability that it was preached here by St. Paul; and that there is an absolute certainty that it was planted here in the times of the apostles, before the destruction of Jerusalem. First of all, as we are told, their great anxiety was, that the deed on which their heart was set, the death of Jesus, should not be at the passover. Nothing can account for such phenomena but design; and the more so as there is no ground to assume that each succeeding evangelist was kept in ignorance of his predecessor's account of our Lord. These porches were upheld by pillars, cut out of solid blocks of marble in one piece. Such were the terrible pictures of the day of the Lord.. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.". The honour they paid those who had suffered in times past was the proof that they succeeded not them but their enemies, the true legitimate successors of those that slew the friends of God. And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. The latter may be the simpler application of the two, and evidently more familiar to ordinary thought; but there seems no real reason to question, that if the one be meant symbolically, so too is the other. Places that have been sown will appear as unsown, full barns be found empty, and the springs of wells be stopped. pressed on Him by the prince of this world, who nevertheless found nothing in Him. And it is in essence saying the Lord is delaying His coming.Jesus said, "look you don't know the day or the hour; therefore watch, therefore be ready." What exactly is meant by "the gospel of the kingdom?" Is this proclamation still a future event? 3. 13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. Jesus answers the disciples' third question first. Hence it is that in the Church's assembling, and most properly, on the Lord's day, we do in the breaking of bread show forth, not the resurrection, but the death of the Lord. We should not know from the first evangelist of any interval in either case; nor could we learn from either the first or the third but that the cleansing of the temple occurred on His earlier visit. Alas! These all constitute signs of His return, world wars. That was gloriously and triumphantly true. Now does that sound to you like a secret coming in a private chamber someplace? Now He prepares to suffer, to suffer in absolute surrender of Himself to the Father. (a) If Jesus said it in reference to the Second Coming, he was mistaken for he did not return within the lifetime of the generation listening to his words. These are Matthew 24:15-22. The Vision Of The Future ( Matthew 24:1-31), 24:1-31 1. But all their works they do to be seen of men." God has a sword ready to avenge the quarrel of his covenant, his new covenant. There is really nothing towards God and man like the death of Christ. The second section ( Matthew 24:36-41) says quite definitely that no one knows the time of the Second Coming, not the angels, not even Jesus himself, but only God; and that it will come upon men with the suddenness of a rainstorm out of a blue sky. "And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him." He wanted to preserve the temple, but some drunken soldier shot a flaming arrow, the temple caught fire, the people inside were cremated. In short, the original position is deserted. 1. A false leader is a man who seeks to propagate his own version of the truth rather than the truth as it is in Jesus Christ; and a man who tries to attach other men to himself rather than to Jesus Christ. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. The siege of Jerusalem was one of the most terrible sieges in all history. How great is the change of dispensation is manifest from His former commission to the same men in Matthew 10:1-42. And so they set fire to the temple, actually against Titus' order. (Matthew 28:1-20) That morning, very early, when there were none there but the guards, the angel of the Lord. Then I little understand my liberty and joy. The Daniel reference is quite clear. All, therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. ( Revelation 14:9, Revelation 14:11). We enter upon a new series in the rest of this chapter and the next. But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delays his coming; and he shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he is not looking for him, and in an hour in which he is not aware, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth ( Matthew 24:47-51 ). We now enter on the Lord's final presentation of Himself to Jerusalem, traced, however, from Jericho; that is, from the city which had once been the stronghold of the power of the Canaanite. The people would be massacred, the temple burnt and the city destroyed. i. It was a trial to the disciples of Christ, and therefore agreeable to their state of probation, that they which are perfect, may be made manifest. See Acts 5:36; Acts 5:37. Certainly it was poured upon both. It is against the mind of Christ, that his people should have troubled hearts, even in troublous times. We now go on to look at this vision, not taking the verses of the chapter consecutively, but taking together in turn those which deal with each strand. It is the comfortable delusion of the servant that he will have plenty of time to put things to rights before his master returns. None of these pictures is to be taken literally; they are pictures, and they are visions; they are attempts to put the indescribable into human words and to find some kind of picture for happenings for which human language has no picture. When the world was destroyed by water, the judgment came in the clouds of heaven, for the windows of heaven were opened; so shall it be when it shall be destroyed by fire. Don't bother going to your house to get anything, just get out. They were thus put to silence; for they would not risk loss of influence with the people, and they were determined at all cost to deny the authority of Jesus. For, as in those days before the flood they spent their time eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and were quite unaware of what was to happen until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. The "gospel of the kingdom" is the same good news that John the Baptist, Jesus, and the disciples had preached, namely, that the kingdom was imminent (Matthew 3:2; Matthew 4:17). Jesus saith unto them [such is the application], Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. And if we be frightened at a little brook in our way, what shall we do in the swellings of Jordan?Jeremiah 12:5. Neither the individual Christian nor the Christian Church can ever know anything of a cowardly concealment or a cowardly silence. Notoriously this total ruin of the Jewish state came to pass when the disciples had grown up to be 'a public witness to the world, before the apostles were all taken away from the earth; then their whole national polity sunk and disappeared when Titus sacked Jerusalem, and sold and scattered the people to the ends of the earth. Would not God turn the Jewish rejection of that glorious Person to some wondrous and suitable account? 4-14.) We know also that He traveled through Asia Minor, Greece, and Crete; that he was in Italy, and probably in Spain and Gaul, Romans 15:24-28. Josephus tells a dreadful story of a woman who in those days actually killed and roasted and ate her suckling child (Josephus, Wars of the Jews, 6. But at the same time there is another trait noted here only: the blind and the lame (the "hated of David's soul,"2 Samuel 5:8; 2 Samuel 5:8) the pitied of David's greater Son and Lord) find a friend instead of an enemy in Him who loved them, the true beloved of God. Tony Garland offers an interesting thought that "It is because of the dangerous characteristics of the end of the age that Jesus then moves on to give explicit instructions concerning the safety of those living in Judea when the end of the age is unambiguously signified by the " abomination of desolation " -- the "second sure sign."" The elect of Israel are in question, and His own glory as Son of man, without a word of His being Head; nor of the Church His body. Women and children especially would suffer. The things of the church. However, Jesus is just declaring; "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, for a witness, and then shall the end come." "Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. These gifts ofMatthew 25:1-46; Matthew 25:1-46 seem to me the thorough expression of the activity of grace, that goes out and labours for a rejected and absent Lord on high. They don't like this scripture at all, because Jesus already came, but He is in a secret chamber. He that passed through the doors, closed for fear of the Jews, could just as easily pass through the sealed stone, despite all the soldiers of the empire. the rejected king took but slight interest in the temple of which his disciples thought so much. And sixty-nine sevens would transpire between the time that the commandment would go forth to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, which did go forth in 445 BC by Artaxerxes. Had the season of figs been come, the fruit might have been already gathered; but that season having not yet arrived, beyond controversy the promise of the coming harvest should, and indeed must, have been still there, had any fruit been really borne. Jerusalem was obviously a difficult city to take, being a city set upon a hill and defended by religious fanatics; so Titus determined to starve it out. He therefore, as often elsewhere, presents the entrance into the temple in its completeness, as being the sole matter important to his aim. Impossible. Like it, they, too, were full of promise; like its abundant foliage, they lacked not fair profession, but there was no fruit. These are Matthew 24:3, Matthew 24:14 and Matthew 24:27-28. These were the three judgments which David was to choose one out of; and he was in a great strait, for he knew not which was the worst: but what dreadful desolations will they make, when they all pour in together upon a people! And the love of many will grow cold, because lawlessness will be multiplied. It added to the torment of that damned sinner, that he saw Abraham afar off. He simply says that before Jerusalems fall, the "world" will have an opportunity to know the gospel. The success they should have in these attempts. Accordingly He closes with these words, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world [age]." God alone governs. 15 When ye therefore shall see the . Thus it is in Mark and Luke we find some of the most important details; not in Matthew and John, though Matthew and John were eyewitnesses, Mark and Luke not. But these were lying wonders (2 Thessalonians 2:9), wrought by Satan (God permitting him), who is the prince of the power of the air. Around these were the parties. Grotius will have this to be meant of the great difficulty of drawing the primitive Christians from their religion, and quotes it as used proverbially by Galen; when he would express a thing very difficult and morally impossible, he saith, "You may sooner draw away a Christian from Christ.". Then, again, our souls would shrink from the notion, that what our Lord taught could have merely a passing application. It is in no way confined to the children of God. In the parable of the vineyard, they are tested as responsible in view of the claims of God, who had blessed them from the first with exceeding rich privileges. Undoubtedly, too, some people will believe and others will not. His advent in the clouds of heaven will be to take the throne, not of Israel only, but of all people, nations, and languages. These guilty men go full of anxiety to Pilate. He promised His presence with them to the end of the age; and thereon the curtain drops. It was really a marvel of engineering.So they were showing Jesus the buildings, this fabulous building that was built up there on the temple mount by Herod. In Foxes Book of Martyrs, he lists the death, and the manner of deaths of all of the disciples, and it's a book that will really give you an appreciation of the heritage that we have and the price that was paid to bring it to us. There are even those today who have large followings, who claim to be the Messiah. For him who most of all presumed on the strength of his love, it was enough to prove how little he yet knew of the reality of death, spite of his too ready boasts. We have here very comprehensively the Christian part, as it appears to me ( i.e., what belongs to the disciples, viewed as professing Christ's name when Israel rejected Him). No critic of weight considers that these words have any just claim to be in the text that is founded on ancient authority. The Lord does not cite the clearest Scripture about the resurrection; He does what in the circumstances is much better; He appeals to what they themselves professed most of all to revere. Accordingly we have, first, servants sent, and then more, not only in vain, but with insult and increase of wrong. And then many will stumble, and will betray each other, and will hate each other. In the last book of the New Testament we have a similar combination of features, when the Church will have disappeared from the earth; that is, the keeping the commandments of God and having the faith of Jesus. It can be mended only by the direct intervention of God. The establishment of the abomination of desolation in the holy place would be the sign for the instant flight of godly ones, like the disciples, who will then be found in Jerusalem. For the moment they followed, crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!" The true Christian is the man who holds to his belief, when belief is at its most difficult; and who, in the most discouraging circumstances, refuses to believe that God's arm is shortened or his power grown less. Secondly, These attendants shall be employed by him as officers of the court in the judgment of that day; they are now ministering spirits sent forth by him (Hebrews 1:14), and will be so then. "There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head as he sat at meat." They were remarking really on the stones, one of the gospels tells us. The latter scene of the chapter is, to a simple mind, evident enough. But if man was silent, it was the Lord's place not merely to question but to pronounce; and in Matthew 23:1-39 most solemnly does the Lord utter His sentence upon Israel. If that is so, there could be a repeat of conditions such as those during the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, but on a wider scale and with greater intensity. Was it without moral import? They were hypocrites. In Moses-like fashion, Jesus proves that he is both the leader of the crowds and the intercessor to the divine. 131. The time, however, was come for Jesus to put His question, drawn fromPsalms 110:1-7; Psalms 110:1-7. In John He says, "Touch me not;" and the reason is, "for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God." Note, Christ's warnings are designed to engage our watchfulness; and though the elect shall be preserved from delusion, yet they shall be preserved by the use of appointed means, and a due regard to the cautions of the word; we are kept through faith, faith in Christ's word, which he has told us before. But the days 23. will be shortened for the sake of the elect. It was there that two blind men (for Matthew, we have seen, abounds in this double token of the Lord's grace), sitting by the wayside, cried out, and most appropriately, "Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou Son of David!" ., p. 31 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. When it is a question of power, liberty, life, no doubt we must turn to the resurrection; and hence it is, that in the Acts of the apostles this necessarily comes out most prominently, because the matter in hand was to afford proof, on the one hand, of manifested but despised grace; on the other hand, of God's reversing man's attainder of Jesus by raising Him from the dead and exalting Him to His own right hand on high. Was this last what their faith in God, or rather their want of faith, came to? 20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: 21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. Not the end of the world, as the material world is going to dissolve and be gone, but the end of this age, the age of man's rebellion against God, the end of the age of man's iniquity and sinfulness; before you usher in the new age of God's glorious kingdom. As to the objection brought by some, that to this day not even the slightest report concerning Christ has reached the Antipodes and other very distant nations, this difficulty may be speedily resolved; for Christ does not absolutely refer to every portion of the world, and does not fix a particular time, but only affirms that the gospel which, all would have thought, was immediately to be banished from Judea, its native habitation would be spread to the farthest bounds of the world before the day of his last coming. The Sadducees had not faith, and hence were in total error and blindness: "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God." Today we are living in a time when iniquity abounds. Matthew 24:19 Commentary. A prediction of the event of the day; You will now shortly hear of wars, and rumours of wars. The whole truth of His position lies here. But such is likely not the case to Jesus or His first century hearers. But woe unto them that are with child, and to those that are nursing in those days! There are thus many added circumstances in harmony with the case. What does "a witness to all nations" mean? The order, though different from that which obtains elsewhere, is regulated by perfect wisdom. Matthew 27:1-66. The gifts of love to eternity follow the thought of love from eternity; and the Lord knows them that are his. Since the time of Christ there have been thirteen years of war to every one year of peace. And, if that is so, there are certain basic sins. The cross remained a few brief hours, but of eternal value and unfathomable import, with which indeed nothing can compare. This is the truth I tell you--one stone will not be left here upon another that will not be thrown down.". So, in this amazing and difficult chapter of Matthew, we have in Matthew 24:1-31 a kind of sixfold vision of the future. St. Paul himself speaks, Colossians 1:6; Colossians 1:23, of the Gospel's being come into ALL THE WORLD, and preached TO EVERY CREATURE under heaven. Much of the sensible intercourse between heaven and earth is by the clouds; they are betwixt them, as it were, the medium participationis - the medium of participation, drawn by heaven from the earth, distilled by heaven upon the earth. Justly were they who killed the true prophets, left to be ensnared by false prophets; and they who crucified the true Messiah, left to be deceived and broken by false Christs and pretended Messiahs. First, The elect only will be gathered, the chosen remnant, who are but few in comparison with the many that are only called. And from that time it be four hundred and eighty-three years; seven sevens, forty-nine years and threescore and two sevens, or four hundred and sixty-two years, four hundred and eight-three years altogether, and that from this time to the Messiah. Now the early Christians did look for the Second Coming immediately. As that alluded to the outside realm of nature, so this was taken from the Old Testament. Those that are taken away are blessed, and those that remain stay for the judgment. The Lord will preserve you when you get down to Petra, but get out of there as fast as you can.And so that is what the abomination of desolation is. They know not what has made the others wise unto salvation, whatever they may profess; and their restless search, after that which they have not, finally severs them even here from the company of those they started with as looking for the Lord. 1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. [2.] Jesus answers the disciples' third question first. The Messiah was cut off. [1.] Presented here is a verse by verse exposition of the New . . To deny resurrection is, therefore, to deny the promises, and God's faithfulness, and in truth God Himself. And, if the days had not been shortened, no human being would have survived. This is a notable feature, and not here alone, but elsewhere also. God may be pleased to vouchsafe us a perception of what is in His mind, if we be lowly, and diligent., and dependent on Him; or He may leave us ignorant of much, where we are careless or self-confident; but sure I am that the very points men ordinarily fix on as blots or imperfections in the inspired word are, when understood, among the strongest proofs of the admirable guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. The appearing of these was the occasion of dividing that people into parties and factions, which made their ruin the more easy and speedy; and the sin of the many that were led aside by them, helped to fill the measure. "The scribes," He says, "and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. *The most ancient text, represented by the Vatican, Sinai, Beza's Cambridge, L. of Paris (C. being defective, as well as the Alexandrian), and the Rescript of Dublin, omits verse 14, which may have been foisted in from Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47. And God, he said, is going to give them wings of an angel to bear them to a wilderness place, where they will be nourished for three and a half years. Now the Lord does not leave us in total darkness concerning these seven years.He then went on to say, now the prince of the people that shall come, that would be the leader of this final world empire the ten nation federation in Europe, who is called the son of perdition, the man of sin, the beast, or several different names in the scriptures, commonly called the antichrist; he will make a covenant with the nation of Israel. God would have the iniquity of the Jews published every where, before the heavy stroke of his judgments should fall upon them; that all mankind, as it were, might be brought as witnesses against their cruelty and obstinacy in crucifying and rejecting the Lord Jesus. Behold, he cometh in the clouds, Revelation 1:7. This is the truth I tell you-- this generation shall not pass away, until these things have happened. Here, then, Messiah answers to the cry of faith of these two blind men. 2. For at that time there will be great affliction, such as has never happened from the beginning of the world until now, 22. and such as never will happen. And they believe that some of these stones were actually from that temple of which Jesus spake. I. Christ here foretels the going forth of deceivers; he begins with a caution, Take heed that no man deceive you. The raising up Him whom man slew renders this unquestionable. In the old story Noah prepared himself in the calm weather for the flood which was to come, and when it came he was ready.
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