|
|
The Life of the Lord:
Olivet Discourse
From:
The life of the Lord Jesus Christ, a complete critical examination of the
Origin, Content and Connection of the Gospels
pp. 130-137
By
Johann Peter Lange
"As soon as Christ comes to the destruction of
Jerusalem, He conceives it in the prophetic importance which it has
to His disciples. He assumes that they will live to see the destruction
themselves. He then points out to them the sign by which they were to
recognise that the judgment was about to break over
Jerusalem."
SECTION VII.
OF THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, SURROUNDED BY HIS
CONFIDENTIAL DISCIPLES. THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE JUDGMENT OF GOD, OF THE
DESTRUCTION OF THE HOLY CITY AND OF THE TEMPLE, AS WELL AS OF THE END OF
THE WORLD. THE PARABLES OF THE TEN VIRGINS AND OF THE TALENTS. THE
JUDGMENT OF THE WORLD—WATCH !
(Matt.
xxiv. 3-xxv. 46; Mark xiii. 3-37; Luke xxi. 7-36.)
It was already perhaps about eventide, when the
Lord, with His disciples, left Jerusalem
to travel the accustomed road over the Mount of Olives to Bethany, for
He had done a very heavy day's work. But when He had arrived at the
Mount of Olives, He casts one more lingering look hack on poor
Jerusalem. It was as if He could no more;
as though it would have been impossible to Him to pass beyond the crest
of the Mount of Olives immediately—at once to lose from His sight the
beloved city. Upon the declivity on this side, He sate down directly
opposite to the temple. Probably the sun was just setting, perhaps it
had already disappeared. And there He sate, in the evening twilight, His
gaze resting on the city; on the temple, the object of so many wishes
and benedictions; on the holy place, which had been to Him the dearest
on earth, but which now He saw doomed to judgment.
But grief did not cloud the clearness of His
Spirit; it only gave to His gaze the more intense direction upon the
future of Jerusalem, to the judgments
which were to coine upon the city. And in the
doom of Jerusalem He saw the type
and foreshadow of all the judgments which should come upon the people of
God, and upon humanity, even to the last judgment. He was now in the
position of a great seer of the future judgments of God; and this
foresight He would leave in its large outlines as an inheritance to His
people.
Here in view of the holy city and of the temple,
over which
1 [On the pathos
and moral effect generally of the local situation of the speaker, and
the parties addressed in this discourse, see Greswell, On the
Parablel, v. 420.—Ed.]
the night was falling, He would communicate to His
disciples the outlines of the coming judgments.
Probably, indeed, He knew that in so doing He was
anticipating their own eager wish. The disciples must have some new
information about the future, for the last disclosure of their Master
had effected a great disturbance in their theocratic view of the world.
The image of the future of the Messianic age, as they had constructed it
for themselves, was shattered. They now were without any knowledge of
their probable relation to the future, and they needed new information.
As simple Old Testament believers, they had until
now expected that, with the manifestation of the Messiah, which they
themselves had just hailed, and of which they had been the heralds,
would be very soon associated the revelation of His glory,—the extension
of His kingdom,— the glorification of Zion,—the judgment of the world;
and therewith the end of the old order of things,—the beginning of a new
world.
It is true they might, as pious readers of the Old
Testament, have been in some measure familiar with the idea of the
suffering Messiah. For although we learn from the Gospels, how much the
knowledge or the right understanding of the prophets fell short in the
time of Christ, still the prophecy of the old Simeon was a proof that it
had not altogether failed. Added to this, Christ had predicted His
sufferings and His death in so definite a manner. But we have already
seen with how little of simple resignation they could appropriate to
themselves this prediction. And if they at all received the idea of
their Lord's death into their view of the future, the announcement of
His resurrection on the third day nevertheless induced them somehow to
hope for some wonderful turn of a happy kind soon to occur. Yet this
hope had little power to support them at the time of Christ's
crucifixion.
Moreover, they might indeed have known from the
prophet Daniel also (chap. ix. 26), of a doom
of destruction which impended over the city of
Jerusalem and the temple in the days of
the Messiah, and in connection with His sufferings; but the Evangelic
history shows us how little the Israelites of that day had taken up into
their practical view of things around them the threatening prophecies of
this nature.
This much is evident from the earnest inquiry
of the disciples, that the coming destruction of
Jerusalem which the Lord predicted to
them was something new to them, which extremely disturbed and
disquieted their hearts.1 In every
case they had probably pictured to themselves the sad intervening
circumstances between the first appearance of their Lord and His
glorification on Zion, as passing over quickly. But now they had
received from Him the definite assurance that the temple must fall
into ruins, Jerusalem be destroyed,
her people undergo a terrible doom of
reprobation. Therewith, before their eyes, had been opened a deep
and fearful gulf which tore wide asunder the events of Christ's
present manifestation from His coming glorification; a gulf which
formed itself into a yawning abyss, in whose depths they saw nothing
but judgment, calamity, and destruction, and in which even their
hopes were in danger of being swallowed up. That was their
difficulty, the great and terrible chasm between the first and
second appearing of the Messiah—a chasm which was now certain to
them. We might easily apprehend how this heavy intervening time
would distress them, since it has been a temptation to Christians at
all times,— a dark valley which many have sought to fill up and to
hide by chiliastic schemes, chimeras, and systems ;2
while others preferred to abandon the expectation of Christ's coming
altogether, which they melted away into spiritualistic ideas.
It was now, therefore, certain to the
disciples that they had to separate between the present
manifestation of Christ and His future return to His glorification,
with which the judgment upon the world and the end of the world were
associated; and that the destruction of
Jerusalem was to occur in the interval. But they were
altogether in uncertainty when that destruction was to happen, in
what relation it was to stand to the end of the world, (or the
second advent of Christ), and especially, whether they were to
regard the destruction of Jerusalem
as the sign of the judgment of the world or not. Hereupon they
desired to have an explanation from the Lord.
1 The remark of
Ebrard, ' Thus also the prediction of the suffering of Jesus was an
impulse which complicated all their previous eschatological
conceptions, and, as it were, dislocated their whole scheme,' is
therefore so far to be modified, as that this complication was first
effected by the prediction of the destruction of
Jerusalem.
2 To which
especially belongs the completed curialistic Papacy.
We learn from the Evangelist Mark, that the
three most confidential disciples of Jesns—Peter, James, and John,
to whom on this occasion was joined Andrew—put before Him the
question which occupied their minds. But they asked Him with an air
of circumspection, in a confidential manner. How are we to
understand this, since the Lord already had found Himself so nearly
alone on the Mount of Olives with His disciples in the stillness of
evening ? We can hardly suppose that He separated those confidential
ones from the rest, and entrusted to them alone the communication—as
He had once separated the three first in the explanation—that He was
purposing. In that case it might be expected that He would have
separated only the same three disciples again ; and at the same
time, that the rest of the Evangelists would have mentioned this
circumstance. The mysterious and confidential form, as it was used
here on the mountain at eventide, must probably have had its
peculiar reasons. Perhaps the Lord was anxious that the traitor
should not be near them during their conversation. Perhaps, also,
there were other disciples or other friends, who were sent in
advance to Bethany. But, at any rate, we apprehend that the
disciples, even in the solitude of the Mount of Olives, even in the
shadow of evening twilight, could scarcely speak above a whisper of
the impending destruction of the holy city and of the temple.
The narrative which the three first
Evangelists, especially Matthew, have given of the discourse of the
Lord upon the last things, has been not only found in many ways very
obscure, but will more often be found also intricate and
contradictory. Many later interpreters and critics have thought that
they have met with certain chiliastic errors here, which they would
willingly, even with reference to other places, charge upon the
disciples, or even upon the Lord Himself.1
As regards the narratives of the three
Evangelists, it will result from the representation of this subject,
that they entirely agree with one another in the outlines, but they
supplement one another in the details. From this we gain
confirmation of the supposition, which besides for us is already
established, that they have communicated in their accounts, not only
individual and peculiar views, but the special teaching of the Lord.
But it also results from the question of the disciples, as the
Evangelists cite ' Compare the statement in Ebrard, 389.
it, that their chiliastic suppositions, which
have been charged on them in their later position, were already
altogether shaken by the announcement of the destruction of
Jerusalem. They ask, ' When shall
these things be 1 and what is the sign of this manifestation,
and of the end (the consummation) of the world I' They thus not only
distinguish between the destruction of Jerusalem
and the second coming of Christ to the final judgment; but, at the
same time, they give it plainly to be understood, that they do not
consider it certain that the destruction of
Jerusalem will be the sign of the impending end of the world.
Indeed, it just as much follows from the question, that they are not
yet convinced of the contrary, especially when we look back to the
position of their question in Mark and Luke; so also the answer of
the Lord, which not only specifies to them the sign of the
approaching end of the world, but also the sign of the approaching
destruction of Jerusalem. Their
question is just as wavering and uncertain as their present
position; the answer of the Lord, for the first time, gives them a
true light upon it.1
In reference to the relation of the four
Evangelists to the discourses of Jesus of the last things, it is
well worthy of consideration, that John has recorded nothing of them
in the Gospel.2 We have already on
another occasion called attention to the fact that this omission may
be explained by the circumstance that the Apostle would reserve to a
special Apocalypse the disclosures of the Lord on the last things.3
Moreover, the comparison of this discourse of Jesus with the
Apocalypse affords us more than one service. It teaches us, for
instance, first of all to consider this discourse as the special
life-germ of the New Testament Apocalypse. Moreover, it teaches us
to estimate the apostolic character of the eschatology of the
Apocalypse, finding as we do similar features in the apostolic
history. But, finally, our attention is called by the Apocalypse to
a circumstance which
1 Stier, iii.
244. There is thus no good reason for making two sharply distinct
questions out of their question.
2 Stier (ii.
539, iii. 244) makes the sensible remark, that John had it as his
peculiar esoteric privilege to record the sayings of Jesus of His
coming to comfort; while, on the other hand, the Synoptists had to
record the prediction of the Lord of His coming to judge.
3 See, in the
author's miscellaneous writings, vol. ii., the treatise on the
indissoluble connection between the individuality of the Apostle
John and that of the Apocalypse, 181.
is of the highest importance to the
elucidation of this place. This is the fact that the Apocalypse
represents the course of the world's history, not in an unbroken
sequence of events, but in large cycles, which always embrace the
entire course of the world, while therein each cycle is drawing
nearer to the end of the world.1 If
this mode of representation had been recognised, here also this much
discussed portion of Scripture would have been more easily relieved
of many difficulties.
It is not to be denied that the prophecy of
judgment as declared by Jesus—here as well as in the prophets—is
treated perspectively; that is to say, that the judgment of God is
represented in one large comprehensive picture upon
Jerusalem, in connection with the
future judgment of the world, and the former forms the foreground of
the latter.2 Moreover, this explains
how the great interval between the destruction of
Jerusalem and the world's end, as it
is sketched in Matt. xxiv. 22-26, not only strikes one very little,
but also is represented definitely—under the point of sight of the
judicial government of God, so to speak—in the twofold reflection of
the flames of Jerusalem, and of the
judgment at the end of the world.
It is thereby at once decided that in this
representation there must be something typical. The destruction of
Jerusalem must be in conformity with
its nature, and therefore also, in conformity with this
representation, a prelude of the second advent of Christ, of the
last judgment, and of the end of the world. Nay, according to strict
historical accuracy, the judgment upon
Jerusalem must of necessity bring about the last judgment and
the end of the world: only grace modifies this
doom (for the elect's sake, these
days of terror shall be shortened,
1 Compare the
above -mentioned treatise.
2 Stier, iii.
249. On the origin of the opinion of the perspective view, see
Dorner, de oratione Christi eschatologica, 35. [See
Fairbairn's instructive chapter on the interconnected and
progressive character of prophecy (Prophecy viewed in its
Distinctive Nature, etc., c. vi.), and the remarks of Greswell
(Parables, v. 198 ff.) on the interpretation of this prophecy
of our Lord's. He says (223), ' One observation is very necessary to
be made, and to be kept in view throughout: that the events
predicted being regarded in the light of signs, bearing a special
reference to a certain point of time before and after the period of
their occurrence, it is the Jirst instance of such events
with which we are properly concerned, and not such repetitions of
the same as might occur again from time to time afterwards.'—Ed.]
Matt. xxiv. 22). And there occurs still an
intervening period between the two great epochs of
doom. But, strictly, such a
characterization of this period suggests that the destruction of
Jerusalem was the judgment of the
world, preliminary, and interrupted by grace; and, on the other
hand, that the last judgment is the continuation and fulfilment of
that theocratic judgment of God which began with the destruction of
Jerusalem.
If, however, the perspective and typical
elements in the prophecy of Christ be brought into prominence, so as
to melt their several expressions into one another, in a similar way
to that in which perhaps they might melt together in Old Testament
prophecies—this is altogether inadmissible. First of all, upon the
general ground that Christ is a Seer, not in the concrete manner of
visionary insight, and describes what He sees not in the way of
ecstacy, which must neglect time and place; but in the completed
knowledge, consciousness, and power of one who can modify the
results.1 Then, moreover, because in
this case there was required, not only for the questioning
disciples, but also for the Lord who answered them, above all
things, an accurate, even a sharp definition of the periods.2
First of all, the Lord gives to the disciples
an accurate picture of the destiny of His people in their relation
to the course of the world, even to the world's end,—a picture of
the future of the world and of the Church as His future in the
outlines which they for the most part needed. This is the first
cycle (Matt. xxiv. 4-14; Mark xiii. 5-13; Luke xxi. 8-19).
The disciples had inquired of Him the times
and the signs of the last things. The times and the signs were to
them, in accordance with their more external, nay, chiliastic
interest, the chief concern. Thus the answer of Christ, His first
word as well as His first explanation, establishes a sharp contrast
to the external interest of the .question : ' Take heed that no
man deceive you,' especially lead you wrong just in respect of.
those signs
1 Not
exclusively Tu
iritvftaTi; but just as much, ri? tot.
2 Dorner brings
this out with reason and force in the above cited treatise, 9.
Ebrard also, in the treatise, Adversus erroneam nonnullorum
opinionem qua Chrislus, Christique apostoli judaicis somniis decepti
ezistu- ma.ise perhibentur fore ut universale judicium ipsorum
astute superveniret, 7.
and times. According to the view of the Lord, that is the chief point in
the eschatological knowledge of His disciples—the foresight in the
presentiment that many deceivers shall arise, but not the knowledge of
external times and signs. Hence the holy suspense and concentration of
mind in the presentiment that great risks and great deceits awaited the
Christian at his entrance into a wide futurity, and that great sobriety
of spirit, clear eye, and earnest hand must be his watchwords.
Hereupon Christ sketches the outlines of the world's course up to His
advent. The entire description embraces in the consideration of the
world's course,—the history of the nations, with the history of His
kingdom,—the history of humanity, with the history of the earth and its
world. It presupposes, as the point of commencement of the development
of this world-system, the first manifestation of Christ. From this
distinctive point of life, the world progresses in its development
towards the future end of the world, with which the transformation of
the world is to appear. This development is represented in two lines—in
a more tranquil one which forms the foreground, and in a more
tempestuous one which forms the background. The first shows in the more
customary signs that the Church, humanity, and the earth, are advancing
towards the end. The second sets forth, in large and startling
vicissitudes, the birth-pains of the last times. Moreover, each line of
view has two sides, a Christologic and a cosmic one.
That is the Christologic side of the first line in the world's career,
that many come in the name of Christ, and say, I am Christ, and the time
of the consummation of the world is at hand (Luke xxi. 8) ; and many
allow themselves to be deceived and misled by them. Here is indicated
every form of chiliasm, making itself known in false Messiahs, in false
representatives of Christ, in heads of sects and pretended infallible
philosophers, —making itself known generally in all religious,
political, and philosophical schools and systems, which seek to declare
the consummation of the world. To this excitement in the kingdom of
spirits, which reveals that humanity is possessed with the thought of
the coming of Christ to renew the world, is opposed the cosmic side of
the progress: wars and rumours of wars, which, incessantly breeding
themselves anew, cause their din to resound from the armies of the
nations into the camp of the congregation;
wars, to which, according to Luke, insurrections are added. It is thus
plainly acknowledged that humanity is in movement, and the Church is in
movement, and that the one line of progress must stand in mysterious
rapport with the other. It is plain, moreover, that the course of
the world is in progress towards the end of the world. But Christians
are not to allow themselves to be disturbed, as if the end were
immediately: they are to look calmly upon the world's wars, and not
allow themselves to be startled; just as they are sharply to watch the
false forms of Christ, and not to allow themselves to be led away. ' The
end,' says Christ,' is not yet'—is not immediately at hand. The
Christological development of the world is a development as high as
heaven, profound, penetrating beyond the boundary of humanity, of the
earth, and of the whole of this present cosmos; therefore it is a slow
development.
In the second stadium, the world-crisis is represented as tempestuous;
its pulses beat more hurriedly and impetuously. Here the Lord brings
out, first of all, the cosmologic side. One people lifts itself up
against the other; one kingdom against the other. Humanity is in a storm
of excitement, as the waves of the sea beat against one another in the
tempest. And now it is manifest that nature and the earth have a deep
sympathy with humanity in this process of development. There appear
famines, in which the distempered earth is wanting to man ; pestilences,
in which distempered man is wanting to the earth (\ifi.ol teal \oifwl);
great storms and earthquakes from place to place; fearful phenomena and
great signs in heaven (Luke xxi. 11). According to the word of the Lord,
these facts are to be regarded as the beginning of sorrows (o>Biva>v),
of the labour- throes of the old world-form. They show, not only
that in the mighty progress earthly nature is engaged in a parallel
movement with humanity, but they represent the accelerated movement of
this progress, in which one spasm follows on the other. Therewith also
corresponds the increased distress in the Christo- logic development of
the world's course. Christians are delivered over to affliction, —they
are outlawed and excommunicated,— they are put to death. They are hated
of all people for Christ's name's sake. Moreover, while they are thus
externally afflicted, the congregation is also disturbed within. The
matter originates thus :—That many are offended with one another; that
they
are exasperated with real and fancied grievances; that they are
degenerate, and so lose their character as Christians. Then matters
become worse: they deliver one another np, whether by giving one another
bad names before the earthly adversaries, and putting one another to
shame; or that, by fanatical excommunications, they give one another
over to Satan. The result is, that they hate one another. Faith-hatred,
creed- hatred, party-hatred, opinion-hatred, individual hatred, more
public manifestations of darkness, which contradict the very root of
faith and of creed, as well as the definition of Christian fellowship,
of Christian individuality and conviction. But while thus, on the one
side, there is abundant ill-feeling in the appearance of Church
fellowship, under the pretext of offences given, the false prophets
oppose themselves as antagonists to the deteriorated nature of the
Church, as it appears in its obscured forms of life: who are appointed
for judgment, and themselves again become liable to judgment; erroneous
preachers of novelty, new preachers of error, as if called upon, and, as
it were, necessitated by fanaticism, to adopt the side of opposition;
and they succeed in leading away many.
But the foundation of these sad manifestations is found in the moral
region ; it is evidenced in the thousandfold failures in
faithfulness,—in faithfulness towards the law of the Lord, as it is
treasured up in Scripture, and as it is written on the hearts. Because
unrighteousness, or opposition to law, increases, therefore love in many
will grow cold. For the law is absolutely the defence, the training and
regulation, the horn and ornament of love.
These are the gloomy outlines of the world's history even to the world's
end. It will be hard for the Church and hard for the individual to pass
through all these risks. One thing, however, will aid,—patience even to
the end; constancy and patience. ' He that shall endure unto the end,'
says Christ, according to the two first Evangelists, ' the same shall be
saved.' Luke has the stronger expression. In your patience shall ye
attain your life (make it a free self-possession), after he has uttered
the word,—' there shall not an hair of your head perish.' Unscathed,
altogether unscathed, Christians were to pass through all the tempests
of the world and its flames to the end of the world. They shall find
their life once more altogether pure and glorified,
if they preserve the life of their life with ceaseless constancy and
patience.
The Evangelists Mark1 and Luke2
insert in this place several details which Matthew perhaps more rightly
has included in the instruction which Jesus imparted to the apostles.
It is not to be denied that many of these details were fulfilled in a
most striking way in the earliest days of the Church.3
The period up to the time of Constantine might be considered the first
typical era of the entire Christian history of the world. But that
abundance of eschatological features which is apparent in the foreground
of Christian history, must not lead us to deny the universal side of
these prophecies of Christ.
This is all the more manifest, when we see the agreeable features of the
world's progress which Christ contrasts with those that are mournful. '
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world, for
a witness to all people.' This is the first and the last pleasant
feature in the world's history, which must and can outweigh all
sorrowful features. The Gospel shall be preached in all the world, or to
all the heathens (Mark xiii. 10). Then let the deceiving false Messiahs
appear, one after the other; let bloody wars and wild rumour of war fill
the world; let old systems be dissolved in democratic movements and
revolutionary storms ; let public calamities visit the whole earth ;
yea, let the earth itself shake into ruins,—yet the Gospel of the
kingdom, of the coming kingdom of the new, and fair, and eternal polity
of God, which is to issue from redemption, shall be announced to all
people !
Thus decidedly shall this Gospel be published to all nations, until it
has become, in respect of them, a witness which can
1 Chap. xiii. 9-12. 1 Chap. xxi. 12-16.
3 Stier, iii. 256-7. Among the <&ifiirrp*,
etc., mentioned by Luke, can hardly perhaps be understood such omens
as Josephus has cited, according to the popular belief of the Jews.
Moreover, we do not thereby understand observations of the sun and moon
nor comets, as Ebrard in the above cited treatise, 33 ; but such
phenomena as actually testify of the progress of development of earthly
life in its theocratic relation. [The passage of Josephus referred to is
in the Bell. Jud., vi. 5, 3, which may be seen compared with
passages of Tacitus, and with reference to this passage of the Gospels
in Greswell, On the Parables, vol. v. p. 266. Greswell, whose
whole dissertation is full of information, is decidedly of opinion that
these were among the tfofivrp* here signified.—Ed.]
testify for or against them in judgment. Then will the end come.
And this end which here the Lord refers to is certainly the world's end,
for it is designated as the end absolutely.1
Then begins a new cycle—the second. This describes the destruction of
Jerusalem, with its omens and with its
results,— as the great judgment of God resounding through the ages over
the visible polity of God, until the great world-embracing advent of
Christ (Matt. xxiv. 15-28; Mark xiii. 14-23; Luke xxi. 20-24).
As soon as Christ comes to the destruction of
Jerusalem, He conceives it in the prophetic importance which it
has to His disciples. He assumes that they will live to see the
destruction themselves. He then points out to them the sign by which
they were to recognise that the judgment was about to break over
Jerusalem.
He sets forth this omen as the abomination of desolation, of which the
prophet Daniel2 has spoken, that it
should stand in the holy place. The Evangelist Luke explains this
expression as referring to the besieging army of the Romans, which
should compass Jerusalem. This army
brings with it the abomination in the standards of idolatry, the Roman
eagles, which pollute the holy place, the precinct of the holy city. The
appearance of these signs of pollution, their establishment, the
constant waving of these standards of the heathen world-power upon the
holy hill, is the sign that now the desolation is determined upon the
holy city. That these signs are meant, and not perhaps what occurred
later, or possibly the desecration of the temple by the zealots who
accomplished a massacre therein, or by the irruption of the Romans,
appears from the fact that the Lord indicated this sign to the disciples
as the signal for flight, and that subsequently the Christians did
actually flee at the commencement of the siege of
Jerusalem. If they had been told first to
wait for the desolation of the temple, it would then have been much too
late to take refuge in flight.
The Evangelists Matthew and Mark direct the attention of their Christian
readers to this token of deliverance. They were to notice it accurately,
for it was to be a sign of preservation for
1 Vide the above treatise of
Ebrard, 171.
1 Chap. ix. 27. See Stier, iii. 266, on
this expression.
the Christians in Jerusalem. It has even
been concluded from their observation, that about the time when the
calamities of war had already approached the city of
Jerusalem, they must have written their
Gospels.1
At all events, the note is not to be mistaken, ' Let him that reaaeth
understand,'—a clear token on behalf of the true origin, the ancient
historical efficiency, of the first Gospels ; especially a testimony
that they must have appeared before the destruction of
Jerusalem.2
The Lord now commands His disciples that all of them who are in Judaea
should take flight to the mountains, as soon as they perceive the sign
mentioned. Out of Judasa to the mountains, signifying thereby
probably not the nearest mountains, as most convenient for refuge, but
the high mountains of Peraea, that mountain-chain which was probably
indicated from their position in Jerusalem
merely as the mountains.
But the Lord has already asserted that this flight should be very
hurried, in the first word in which He referred to the destruction of
Jerusalem. When ye shall see the
abomination of desolation,—flee. Moreover, He expresses the same in a
succession of the most urgent instructions: ' Let him that is on the
house-top not go down into the house, neither enter therein to take
anything out of his house; and let him that is in the field not turn
back again to take up his garments' (laid aside for his work). The one
was immediately to hasten away over the house-tops, the other as he
stood in his under garments. Thus strongly He urges them with
hyperbolical expressions, whose full and lively truth is the energy of
the admonition that then they would have absolutely no time to lose. '
For these be the days of vengeance,' He adds, 'when all things which are
written shall be fulfilled.'3
Thus the Lord enjoined His people to abandon the Jewish people in, their
last struggle. And, indeed, rightly so. For that last war was in the
most peculiar sense a struggle for the
1 Hug, Introd. to the New Testament,
ii. 14.
7 Olshausen, in loco.
3 ' Scil., not only in Daniel, but in
every prophecy of judgment and wrath upon the people, from the curses of
Moses to the D~in with which Malachi concludes.'—Stier, iii. 270.
presumptive truth of Pharisaism, of the fanatical hatred against the
heathen—a war of chiliastic madness. Only in the delusive hope of the
help of a Messiah, or of a divinity such as was conceived for itself by
that very fanaticism which had crucified the true Christ, would the Jews
have undertaken and persevered in this war. And therefore the Christians
could take no part in the contest; for they would have thereby been
partaking in the chiliastic frenzy of the Jews, which was contrary to
their faith.
And thus, therefore, they faithfully followed the warning, saving
instruction of the Lord in fleeing to Pella as soon as the Jewish war
broke out. The preserving, delivering, pure Spirit- glance of Christ
uttered the first word : it chiefly brought His own people into safety.
And then He could also let the glance of His sympathy fall upon those
who in such a time must suffer terribly: ' Woe unto them that are with
child, and to them that give suck in those days.' Then He adds: ' But
pray ye that your flight should not be in the winter, nor on the Sabbath
day.' Thus carefully He regards their flight. The addition, 'on the
Sabbath day,' has been thought strange.1
But let it be well considered what a danger there was of the Christians
drawing upon themselves the sorest persecutions of the Jews, if, in that
time of burning, raging fanaticism, they wished to forsake the Jewish
commonwealth in Judaea on a Sabbath day. Such a regardlessness would
have sufficed to make them appear in the eyes of the Jews not only as
heretics, but even as traitors.
Finally, Christ considers the inevitable misery itself. Those days shall
be the time of great affliction, such as was not from the beginning of
the world until now.
' Neither shall be,' He adds, by way of comfort.
This affliction He goes on to delineate. According to the narrative of
Luke, ' There shall be wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by
the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations :
and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of
the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled.'
These words have been fulfilled, and are being fulfilled continually,
with an accuracy which of itself is abundantly sufficient to glorify
Christ as the Prince of the prophets.2
1 De Wette, in loc.
2 [They were fulfilled in the few years
before and after the siege of Jerusalem,
by the slaughter of about 1,500,000 Jews.—Ed.]
Hereupon Christ makes one observation which is of the highest importance
for the true estimation of this second escha- tological cycle, as has
been already intimated : ' And if those days were not shortened, no man
should be saved: but for the elect's sake they shall be shortened.'
If those days were not shortened, all flesh, even humanity, would be
destroyed without remedy. The meaning of that is clear enough, that,
according to the stringent conception of theo- .cratic justice, the
judgment upon Jerusalem must be
transmuted into the last judgment of the world,—it must result in the
end of the world. And, indeed, perhaps first on this account, because it
is the retribution for the crucifixion of the Son of God, their
Deliverer, by the theocratic people Israel, wherein lay the decree that
they have incurred the doom, and because
the heathen world have decidedly partaken in this
doom. But further, however, for this
reason, because the people of Christ, which from that time forward was
the salt of the earth, might easily have perished with them in the
destruction of Jerusalem, if they had not
been sufficiently early warned and delivered by their Lord. Finally, in
the third place, on this account, because in the war of extermination
between the Jews and the heathens, the former, who had the charge of
becoming teachers and priests to the heathen, and of communicating to
them the blessing of Abraham, have arrived at the point of cursing the
heathen a thousandfold in the bitterest fanaticism, and because the
heathens have furiously trodden under foot the theocratic people, and
their sanctuary, instead of moving with the highest joy to the place of
the knowledge of the living God, and entering into the spiritual
fellowship of the faithful people of God. Were there no elect, like
angels, to overshadow this terrible conflict, and bring to humanity the
assurance of its salvation, its highest good, this conflict must proceed
in one unbroken course from godless tumults of the people to the
judgment of the world. But for the elect's sake, for the sake of those
who are believers already, or who will one day be believers, the days of
this judgment shall be shortened, the judgment is abated—is, so to
speak, interrupted.
Thus arises a period of interrupted, of suspended judgment. —a period in
which the doom of the theocratic people
is indeed not yet concluded, but continues in suppressed judgment-days ;
in which, moreover, that deep feeling of divine wrath which is the
condition of the peculiar terrors of judgment, has incurred a great
suspense, after which the close of the judgment is to follow.
This, then, is the period between the destruction of
Jerusalem and the end of the world: the
period of shortened, suppressed judgment-days.1
The Lord is speaking of this period when He says, 'And then,3
if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, He is there ;
believe him not.'
This period has a remarkable dual aspect. On the one side it is a great
time of deliverance—the time of salvation of the elect; but on the other
side, it shows the continuance of the judgment of the theocratic people
still. First of all in the fact, that the calamitous consequences of the
destruction of Jerusalem are still being
worked out. Israel is scattered among the heathen.
Jerusalem is trodden under foot of the
heathen. In that respect that silent judgment is revealed, in which,
throughout the entire interval, the people is disposed everywhere to
seek a centre for the manifestation of Christ, for the glory of His
kingdom, and finds it nowhere. It is the silent judgment upon the
theocratic people of this period, in which the Christians sympathize
with the Jews, that nowhere upon earth, in no place, in no institution
nor fellowship, can they find an abode of the manifested glory of Christ
the King, and yet would everywhere find it so willingly, so eagerly, so
credulously. The third characteristic of this judicial position consists
in the fact, that the people of God, as well as the world, must expect
the Lord, who is their Kedeemer, also as their Judge. That second
characteristic, the want of the manifestation of Christ, becomes a
terible fate, by the readiness of the Christians during this period to
be led away by the chiliastic imposture of those who cry, Here is
Christ! there is Christ! Christians might allow themselves, in a
thousand ways, to be so captivated by dim forms of the glory of Christ,
as to
1 The word
Jmao/sovk means directly
to curtail, to mutilate, to shorten. Comp. LXX.; 2
Sam. iv. 12. But if the judgment-days are here represented as such as
are curtailed or shortened, it is not thereby necessary to understand an
earlier finishing of the time of judgment, but rather an abatement of
the judgment, a silent continuance of it in suppressed judgment-days, in
consequence of some modification.
2 The
To'Ğ is thus referred to
this intervening period of suppressed judgment. Comp. Ebrard's Treatise,
22.
become entirely estranged from the deep source and the lofty splendour
of His glorious kingdom ; from the spirit of His life, and from the life
of His Spirit. In this period appear many chiliastic seducers : on the
one side a false Christ, in pseudo- ecclesiastical form ; on the other
side false prophets, in pseudo- reforming tendency ; and they do many
wonders and signs. They represent as manifest, in powerful agencies, the
irruption of new ideas and powers into the ancient forms of life,
operating so marvellously, that if it were possible, even the elect
would be deceived. ' Take ye heed,' adds the Lord; ' behold, I have
foretold you all things:' that is, you are solemnly warned beforehand,
on the one side, of the false phantoms of the Christ of the Church ; on
the other side, of the false prophets of new revelations.
But there was one sign by which they were to recognise that those
announcements of Christ would be false. They were always to be
recognised by the circumstance, that they would represent only an
external, one-sided, and therefore a limited Christ, as the Lord of
glory; and that therefore they should proclaim such forms of Christ, or
signs of His glory, as should follow quickly, one after the other, and
which would absolutely contradict one another.
At one time they would preach a Christ who is in the desert— a Christ of
false world-renunciation—a glory of Christ's kingdom, which was to rest
upon the egress to the wilderness, upon hermits, upon convents, and the
celibate, upon a priesthood externally opposed to the world, but
internally again given over to the world.1
Thereupon would be proclaimed, in the direction of an opposite system, a
chiliastic false Christ—a Christ in the chambers,
1 It must be distinctly remembered, that
here in both cases an apparent external Christ, or kingdom of Christ, is
spoken of; therefore such explanations are nothing to the purpose, as
would find here, with Olshausen (iii. 259) and Stier (iii. 272), the
opposition between the secret and the public kingdom. It is to be
observed, that Olshausen wishes to find in the chambers the
representation of the manifest; on the contrary, Stier that of
the secret. But the desert (ipnfco;) sufficiently plainly
recalls the hermits, and the world-historical external contradiction of
the Church introduced by them. Moreover, also, the contrast plainly is
suggested, whereby it is to be considered that Tecfcsion, first
of all, imports the storehouses (Luke xii. 24).
in the treasure-chambers and the storehouses, in the enjoyment of
earthly possessions, in the glorification of the present life, —an
impersonal Christ of the chamber, in contrast to a personal Christ
of the community, and a glorification of the kingdom of humanity,
which was to be founded on the glory of the world.
But the one, as well as the other—as well the false Christs, with
their dependents, as the false prophets, with their associates—will
announce their doctrines with excessive fanatical excitement ('ISou!
exclaim both parties). But in the first case it is said, ' Go not
forth' (into the wilderness); in the other, ' Believe it not.'
For with the second advent of Christ the case will be wholly
different. The Lord indicates the form of that coming by an image,
which probably He had often opposed to chiliastic expectation : ' 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,'—thus embracing
the whole world at one time—penetrating it with one beam of light,
shaking it with one shock; a manifestation which will yield to no
double meaning, which will leave room for no doubt—which will just
as little need a herald, as the lightning needs to be illuminated
with human lights—as the thunder needs to be proclaimed by human
voice.
Thus will it happen as by an inevitable necessity. For where the
carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.1
As soon as ever the world is ripe for judgment, ripe for redemption,
both parties, Christians and antichristians, unalterably divided,
fall into a conflict, which is to the death—the earth on the one
side becomes heaven, on the other side hell; so that its
portions falling asunder, strive towards a new union, as is the case
with a decaying carcase. Then also will the eagles make their
appearance, and seek for the spoil whose scent calls them near. On
the one side, heaven will appropriate its portion ; on the other
side, hell will appropriate its portion. Still there prevails here,
in those separations, the view to the judgment— the view to a world
which, in its old conditions, begins to corrupt, whilst it imagines
that it has attained the highest aim with the
1 More accurately, the vultures. Upon
similar expressions in the Old Testament, which authenticate the
proverbial nature of this saying, vide Stier, iii. 275.
grandest advances. As soon as the world is thus ripe for judgment,
then comes the Judge. But the doom
which He executes is a consummation of the
doom upon the theocratic people. The theocratic people
itself—i.e., Christendom, in its external manifestation—has
become a corrupting carcase. The New Testament people is now just as
much decomposed by heathenish frivolity, as once the Old Testament
Church was ruined by Jewish stubbornness. Hence the Lord represents
the last things in the third cycle, the fundamental idea of which is
the end of the world (Matt. xxiv. 29, etc.; Mark xiii. 24, etc.;
Luke xxi. 25, etc.).
Here we must first of all be reminded, that in accordance with every
scriptural supposition, the world's end forms the great closing
epoch of the world's course. But all epochs appear in accordance
with the same fundamental law. First of all, a lengthened and silent
development of that principle in the life of the world, which is to
be manifested in them, prepares for them through a preliminary
period, and they suffer themselves to be waited for, as if they
would never come. But then, when all the conditions of their
appearance are fulfilled, they come so rapidly, so suddenly, as to
surpass in the highest degree all human anticipations. As this is
true of all epochs, so it is most especially true of the epoch of
all epochs, the end of the world.
And this character of excessive suddenness is just what the Lord
expresses in the impressive word ' immediately.'1
After the tribulation of those days (of the next subsequent days of
modified judgment which follow upon the destruction of
Jerusalem), the sun shall lose its
light, and so on, with words which we take literally in the simplest
manner.
For here certainly the end of the world is spoken of. It is true
that the prevailing philosophy as well as the theology of the
rationalistic school is disposed to regard the doctrine of the
1 That tv&ia; here indicates
the rapidity, the suddenness, is plain, from the entire meaning and
harmony of the passage; it denotes the wonderfully rapid breaking in
of the great epoch. Dorner observes, on the contrary (14), that it
must nevertheless be referred to fitra rw fatyiğ ran iifcspon
txtltan. But he thinks that the period after the destruction of
Jerusalem cannot be understood as
coming in under this fatyi;. It has resulted, however, from
our consideration, that this period must be comprehended as
embracing that affliction.
end of the world, or the last day, as a ' myth of the future.' But
assumptions of this kind do not affect us in the least. On the other
hand, we see an unspeakable narrowing of the speculative field of
view, an unspeakable straining of healthful perception, when it is
no longer found necessary to take up into the consideration of the
progress of man's spiritual development, the cosmical side of
humanity, the progress of the earth itself; or if nothing more is
sought to be known at all of a final aim, for the gradual
development of humanity. And in this respect we ought, perhaps, to
commend as great philosophers and theologians, those heathenish
framers of myths who could not reconcile themselves to any
artificially constructed scheme of the world, without a beginning
and an ending, in opposition to such modern philosophers and
theologians as, at least in this point, are ever stupidly easy to be
contented in the necessities of their spirit. Of the beginning and
end of the world, the sound man must either know or invent
something; otherwise, in this ' kingdom of the mean,' it becomes too
limited, too narrow for him. It is an organic spirit-voice, which
bids men conceive of a black Ahriman as overshadowing the beginning
and the end of the world. Even geology always compels us again to
the same result, keeping us familiar with the idea of a future end
of the world. Thus the question, after all, can only be, whether we
wish the knowledge of an end of the world that is to come
subordinated to the interests of humanity, or of an end of the world
related to the training ground of human life as a blind, confused,
destroying destiny. Philosophers and theologians of the kind
intimated, find eventually the latter supposition more reasonable
than the former. Christianity, on the other hand, will only know of
a world's end which is subordinated to the interests of humanity,
which must thus coincide with the history of the development of
humanity.1 In this sense, generally,
we conceive of the relation of humanity to nature. Nature is the
organic life-region of man. Thence follows, firstly, that the life
of the earth must pass through a similar progress of development to
that which is gone through by the life of humanity; secondly, that
this progress of development must be dependent upon that of
humanity; thirdly, that it must run parallel with it, and in all its
substantial impulses must 1 See the
author's paper, der Osterbote, Part i. p. 112.
coincide with it.1 Thus the
paradisaic condition of the infant earth accords with the paradisaic
condition of infant humanity. To the fall of humanity corresponds
the distemperature of the earth in its physical relations. The earth
trembles at the death and at the resurrection of Christ; for thereby
there appeared a wondrous turning-point, as well in its life as in
the life of human ity. Even through nature there prevails an impulse
of development which urges forward its life towards a loftier
position, just as is the case through the life of humanity.2
In this evolution it moves forward calmly, but incessantly: thence
are manifested phenomena of the advancing development of the terrene
cosmos, in earthquakes, famines,, and similar occurrences; just as
the phenomena of progress are evidenced in the development of
humanity, confirmed by Christianity. But when the end of all things
shall come for humanity, because it is mature for judgment, then
also the earthly sphere of humanity, its present cosmos, shall have
become ripe for the catastrophe by which it is to be transformed
into the new world of the new humanity.
There needs no special explanation of the way in which this view of
the world accords with all sound ideas of the relation between the
spirit and nature; while those hypotheses upon which nature, in
relation to man, is to lie prostrate like a dead horse under the
living rider,—a corpse which stiffens motionless under his feet, or
finally, a corpse which may oppose the most unseasonable barrier to
all his endeavours,-—utterly contradict the true estimate not only
of nature and of the spirit, but of their mutual relations as well.
The Christian doctrine of the end of the world may be acknowledged,
indeed, without finding it again in the place here
1 See above, vol. ii. p. 144.
2 Roru. viii. 19.
3 Thus Dorncr in the before-mentioned
treatise. Dorner understands the text referred to as if it
represented, in tropical imagery, the victory of Christianity over
the nature-worship of heathenism (62). On other interpretations of
this place, see Dorner, 61. Cocceius understands by the sun which
loses its brightness, antichrist, as the false representative of the
Sun in the Church; by the waning moon, the State; by the falling
stars, the fall of the hierarchial lights of the Church. The great
issue of these allegorical explanations is worthy of notice. The
place is to be understood thco- cratico-historically. Upon other
interpretations of this kind, which find in the text a picturesque
representation of the destruction of
Jerusalem, see Ebrard's Gospel History.
considered. But it is moreover plain, that here are specified more
clearly such facts as are in general to characterize the end of the
world itself, the sign of the Son of man in heaven, the advent of
Christ, and the great final judgment.
But if the end of the world be spoken of here, it is in accordance
with the nature of the thing that the change begins at the sun. For
the earth does not stand alone in its sphere independently; its life
is associated with the life of its maternal light-planet. If the
earth is to be metamorphosed, the cosmical sphere must be
metamorphosed with it, with which its planetary life is associated.
This happens in this case, so that the change appears at first in
the sun—the sun goes out, it loses its old brilliancy. Then,
moreover, the moon also loses its shining; and the stars of heaven,
which belong to this earthly family of planets, fall from heaven:
they fall out, as Mark expresses himself; that is, perhaps, out of
their old planetary association with the sun. This revolution in the
cosmical sphere of the earth communicates itself then also to the
earth. A distressing presentiment of the impending change invades
the peoples (the new heathendom, into which at that time the great
mass of humanity will be assembled); while the sea, in irregular
tumult, roars and heaves. It is observed, that the powers which
penetrate throughout the heavenly bodies waver; that the ancient
laws of nature also—such, for instance, as the relations of
gravitation—are about to be transformed. With this last change,
which probably has the effect of changing the planetary-heavy
relations of the earth into sidereal-light ones, to carry out the
metamorphosis of the earth, will the sign of the Son of man appear
in heaven, in any case perhaps a cosmical phenomenon ; wherein is
recognised, that henceforth the region of the Church militant
coincides in one with the region of the Church triumphant—the
earthly territory of the kingdom of Christ with the territory of His
heavenly glory.1 Therewith is brought
about the advent of Christ. All the kindreds of the earth shall
mourn, for they shall see 2 the Son of
1 See above, vol. ii. 27, 28; also
the author's pamphlet, das Land iier llerrlichkeit, 147.
Comp. Kurtz, Astronomy and the Bible. [A condensed abstract
of this treatise is prefixed to Clark's translation of Kurtz, On
the 0. T. Covenant,]
' Kal xwionTai, etc.; xa1 odorrai, according to
Matthew, in a signifi
man as He comes in the clouds of heaven in power and great glory.
The Evangelist Luke has preserved for us here the admonition of the
Lord to His disciples: ' When these things begin to come to pass,
look up, and lift up your heads ; for your redemption draweth nigh!'
Now follows the judgment. The call of the heavenly spirits resounds.
The elect are summoned with the loudest trumpet- blasts from their
dispersion among the outcast, into the assembly of the elect. A
celestial call and attraction brings them together from all the four
winds, from all the corners of heaven ; and therewith the separation
between the good and the evil is completed.
Thus is the third cycle, the general description of the world's end
complete. We see how, then, these three cycles work one into the
other in very lively representation. The first embraces the
representation of the entire progress of the Christian world to the
end; the second sets forth God's judgment upon the theocratic
community, as illustrated in the judgment upon
Jerusalem ; the third, God's judgment
upon the nations, as it coincides with the last judgment.
The disciples had asked for a sign by which to recognise the
impending destruction of Jerusalem,
and similarly they desired to know by what sign they might identify
the second advent of Christ. Here, however, the Lord has given them
the signs by which both of these events might be known. But it is
evident that there is a peculiarity common to both of these signs.
They could not well be used as special notes of warning, because the
judgments which they should announce were to follow their appearance
with such extraordinary rapidity. This circumstance our Lord
proceeds to illustrate to His disciples by a parable.
' Understand the matter from the nature of the fig-tree.' When at
length the branches of this tree become tender and full of sap, and
its leaves shoot forth, then ye know that the summer
cant consonance of expressions. They shall cry out in lamentation,
and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven.
The visible appearance of the Holy One to them is fulfilment of this
terror, for they have lived in the supposition that the future
cannot become present, the present not future—the holy not visible,
the visible not holy. Hence they must needs be amazed when the great
future appears brightly in the glory of judgment, in the midst of
the sphere of the present.
is nigh. For the leaves of the fig-tree make their appearance late,
later than the blossoms: they are late tokens ; and as soon as they
appear, summer is immediately after them. ' So also it is with all
the rest of the trees,' according to the word of Luke.1
And this is the case with the signs of those judgments: they do not
long precede the judgments themselves, but the lightning and
thunder-clap closely follow one another; because these judgments are
great epochs which occur startlingly and suddenly. In this way is
the word of the Lord to be understood. ' So likewise ye, when ye
shall see all these things as they come to pass, know that it is
near, even before the doors.'
Should these signs occur within your experience, then prepare
yourselves for the events which these signs announce, being close
before your doors, yea, happening upon your very thresholds.2
He neither can nor will give them any portents of those events which
may facilitate the expectation of them.
The disciples might now perhaps conceive that the expression of
Christ, ' When ye shall see these things,' justified them in
concluding that they themselves should live to behold the last day.
Thereupon the Lord explains Himself now more closely as to His
meaning: ' Verily I say unto yon, This generation' (this race of
believers planted by Me) ' shall not pass,' that is, it will
continue to exist, ' till all these things be fulfilled.'3
And
1 This addition is surely calculated
(as Dorner remarks, p. 56) to act aside the ingenious explanation of
Ebrard (Treatise, 28, 29), according to which the point of
comparison lies in the fact that the leaves of the fig- tree are
poisonous, and are nevertheless forerunners of a wholesome fruit;
just as the errors of the past age conceal, under the appearance of
the vigour of life, their mischievous poison, but nevertheless
become presages of the noblest fruit, even of the triumph of the
Church of Christ. The objection to this view is strengthened by the
consideration that the parable drawn by the Lord was to represent,
1st, a sign patent to observation (which the poisonous character of
the fig-leaf is not) ; 2dly, a sign upon whose track the
circumstance announced follows immediately.
5 Hence also lyyi/; tar i is
closely connected with the foregoing
Wbktk rai/Ta, and it
destroys the true meaning if anything else be supplied. This irağT*
Tasta, moreover,
refers to the ' abomination of desolation,' as a sign of the
immediate destruction of Jerusalem ;
and to the darkening of the suu and moon, and the falling of the
stars, as signs of the beginning of the last day.
3 That the word ytrta may
indicate a special race—a special generation or family—is undoubted
(compare Dorner, p. 30) ; but that it is here iufor
what reason does He know so certainly that it will continue to exist
? He knows assuredly that His words are eternal, that these will
continue even although heaven and earth should pass away. But His
words must endure by their very nature; they must endure as words of
life, living in living hearts, enlightening in enlightened hearts,
reconciling and renewing in hearts that are reconciled and renewed.
Thus, therefore, this His family, His race, shall assuredly endure.
For this reason He said to the disciples, ' When ye shall see all
these things.' He says not these words to them in their individual
character, but as representing His eternal people; and hence they
could not, from His expressions, draw the conclusion that they
themselves, as those individual men, should in their present state
live to see that day of the commencement of the judgment. Had they
been able to conclude thus, He could assuredly never have continued
to address to them the words which follow—words which have it. as
their very purpose to prevent such consequences :—
' But of that day, and that hour, knoweth no man, no, not the angels
which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.'
It must not be forgotten that it was the Apostles and Evangelists
who transmitted these words of the Lord to the Church. It is evident
from this consideration, that all those assertions are false which
represent the disciples as expecting the advent of Christ in their
lifetime. It rather follows from this passage, that wherever they
have in a lively manner expressed their expectation of the advent of
Christ, they must needs have spoken in the consciousness of the
Church, as of that which should not pass away, which had the promise
that it should welcome the advent of Christ, and the task of
constantly expecting it; thus, therefore, of yeved avrrj,
Although this effect of the expression of Jesus has been overlooked,
another has been in many ways falsely apprehended, —namely, the
assertion that the Son knew not the day and the tended to designate
the disciples of Jesus as an everlasting race, seems manifest from
the connection, as has been here shown. Dorner's observation (S. 75)
is Indeed without foundation : praeterea vero Christum dicere non
oportebat: d,uğiğ htyu i/fi'ui ov f'.-/I irnpihin
:/t ytna autrn sed r, ytvta
iifcağ seu vfitrip*. The passage is rather entirely
analogous in its mode of expression to the corresponding passage,
Matt. xvi. 28. There also the Ix>rd speaks of the disciples in the
third person, although he is speaking to themselves.
hour of the end of the world. It is indeed not to be denied, that
the Lutheran doctrine of the ' communicatio idiomatum— the
interchange of all attributes between the divine and human nature of
Christ—finds here no manner of confirmation. But, on the other hand,
it is an entirely ill-founded, nay, false idea to gather from this
assertion of Christ any argument for the 'positive ignorance of
ilie Son ' in respect of that day and that hour. Rather He knows
not of that chronological determination, because it is not yet
suggested as a subject of reflection for Him in His living
experience, in the range of His present life. He does not yet
specify that point in its temporality, because to determine it would
contradict His perfect childlikeness. He opposes His not-knowing
of that moment, as a holy nol-wili-to- know, to the
sinful will-to-know of his disciples ; the divine loftiness
of this not-knowing, to the human paltriness of a pretended
knowledge of this kind. Thus, likewise, it is with the angels in
heaven. It belongs to their eminence neither to know nor to wish to
know of that externality, as perchance it belongs to the eminence of
a perfect artist not to know by heart every little detail of the
outward history of his art. It is thus a heavenly, an angelic, and
divine ignorance, which is opposed to the pettiness and artificial
importance, to the falsely, perchance sinfully, refining subtlety
wherewith other men would determine and know that day.
To the Father alone it is attributed to know that day and that hour,
always and eternally, because He is above the relation of time, and
views all times in one eternal present; and because He knows how
many millions of men have yet to be born before the tree of humanity
has attained its growth ; how many millions of human corruptions
have still to be overcome by His truth; how many millions of human
groans have still to be heard by His grace; how many ecclesiastical,
political, physical, and astronomical conditions have first to be
fulfilled, bqfore the tremendous hour of the world's judgment, and
the world's glorification by the coming of Christ, can strike.
If we cast a general glance upon the collective signs which Christ
has declared to be portents of the judgment of God, it becomes
evident that He has clearly distinguished two kinds of signs: the
signs of the periodic development of the Christian world, or of the
periodic course of the world; and the signs of
the new epochs which begin with the judgments of God. In respect of
the periodic signs, we must again separate between such as only
generally indicate the advance of the world's development—for
instance, wars and persecutions of the Christians; and such whereby
it may be perceived that the progress of the world's history is
hastened, that the end is drawing nearer: great disturbances in the
life of nations, in the ordinary course of nature, and in the Church
itself on the one hand ; on the other, the preaching of the Gospel
throughout all the world. In respect, however, of the signs of the
new epochs, the first, the abomination of desolation, has as its
result the immediate destruction of
Jerusalem; the last, the darkening of the sun, has as its
immediate sequel the end of the world. Moreover, the first judgment
itself is to be considered as a typical portent of the second.
The latter signs are thus of such a kind, they occur so closely to
the judgments which they announce, that believers must not allow
themselves to wait for these signs in easy security. The Lord urged
this very stringently upon His disciples. This is especially the
case with 'the signs of the last day. This will indeed be announced
also by great periodic portents preceding. But these shall only
indicate the beginning of the birth-pangs of the earthly world; with
respect to the times, therefore, they will be very indeterminate
tokens. Thus some will allow themselves ever and anon to be excited
by these signs to chiliastic rashnesses and extravagance; while
others will be disposed to regard them too little. Although,
therefore, Christ has before warned the disciples against such
excitements, He will now warn them just as urgently against this
careless, comfortable view of the periodic portents of the world's
history, as though such things were not of much consequence.
He finds this all the more needful, as He foresees that the world in
general will not regard all the periodic signs of His advent. He
sees that this degree of inconsideration of His tokens will always
go on increasing to the end of the world. And hence He can set forth
this very inconsiderateness, the perfectly thoughtless carnal
security in which the world will be immersed, in the most utter
forgetfulness of His coming to judgment, as itself a terrible
portent of the approaching judgment. It might seem incredible that
the world should be caught
unawares at the end, in the most stupid recklessness of the end of
the world ; bat in the course of its theocratic history, humanity
has once already illustrated this inconsistency, this recklessness
(which of itself is a judgment) about its destiny—to wit, in the
days of the deluge. Christ refers to that instance in the words, '
As it was in the days of Noah, so shall the coming of the Son of man
be.' Hereupon He represents the picture of the world's life in the
last days, in the image of those days of the flood, as a life of
complete absorption in sensuality, and thus of utter for- getfnlness
of God, and spiritual abandonment. ' They ate and drank, they
married and were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered
into the ark, and knew not till the flood came indeed, and swept
them all away. So shall it be,' He adds once more, with emphasis, '
also at the coming of the Son of man.'
He now represents how suddenly the doom
of the world shall come upon the old customary condition of
the world, in a description which we have already once considered
before, but which, even in respect of its significance, might
perhaps be repeated.1 Two men are
working together in the field. The judgment comes upon them and
separates them suddenly, whilst the one is taken, is taken by
Christ, an'd that blessed company of heaven which attends Him, and
that heavenly host carries out upon the other the opposite decree of
rejection. The same separation occurs in the case of two women who
are grinding at one mill.
To this picture is appended, in the liveliest manner, the
exhortation to the disciples to watchfulness. Each one of the three
Evangelists has preserved special features of this admonition : thus
each one represents it in a special form.
According to the Evangelist Luke: ' Take heed to yourselves, lest at
any time your hearts be overcharged (lest your innermost life be
depressed and laden) with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of
this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare it
shall come on all those that dwell upon the face of the whole earth
(who have so entirely devoted themselves to the interest of the
great broad earth as to seek in time their only home). Watch ye
therefore always, and pray that ye may be accounted worthy to escape
all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the
Son of man.' 1 See above, Book II. v. 33.
In the Evangelist Mark it is: ' Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye
know not when the time shall be. For the Son of man is as a man
taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his
servants, and to every man his work, and also commanded the porter
to do his work—namely, to watch. Watch ye therefore,' it is
added; and thus the interrupted text is completed in the most
significant manner, as if the Lord should say, I am the traveller;
you are the porters, who are as watchful ones to receive me with
welcome at my return. He adds: ' for ye know not when the Master of
the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing,
or at the breaking of the morning; lest, coming suddenly,' it is
said in the abruptness of lively discourse, ' He find you sleeping.
And what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!'
The Evangelist Matthew represents the Lord referring at the same
time to the relation of a master of a house to the thief of the
night: ' If the goodman of the house had known in what watch the
thief would come, he would have watched, and it would have been easy
for him to have prevented the irruption into his house.' The counter
proposition it was for the disciples to complete; that the
ignorance of the goodman of the house of the time at which the
thieves come, makes the difficulty of the watchfulness.
In this picture, the disciples appear as the masters of the house,
and the Lord compares His coming to that of a thief; whereas,
according to the previous representation, the disciples appear as
porters, who wait for the Lord of the house coming from without. In
this opposition there lies perhaps a deeper meaning: when Christians
regard themselves here below in their temporal relations as
door-keepers of the coming Christ, then they know that they have to
expect the advent of their Lord as an extremely joyous event; but
when, on the other hand, they regard themselves with earthly
feelings as the lords in this house, then they begin to consider Him
as an unauthorized stranger—they learn to hate Him as a thief; but
they shall in that case be easily overtaken in their sleep by His
unexpected irruption into their comfortable earthly abode, to their
terror.1 The Lord adds, moreover: '
Therefore be ye also ready; for ye know not what hour your Lord
shall come.' 1 See above, Book II.
iii. 11. VOL. IV. I 4
With these last words we arrive at the parables upon the last
things, which we have already considered above.
These parables are one and all appointed to describe the true '
preparation of Christian people' for the advent of Christ.
The first parable, which contrasts together the unfaithful and the
faithful servant, insists upon faithfulness in the life of duty.
The second parable, wlnch contrasts together the wise and foolish
virgins, insists upon the life in the Spirit of Christ. Here the
Spirit is the chief matter in the life of duty. Thus wise as well as
foolish virgins are represented as slumbering. The external
drowsinesses into which feeble nature might fall, do not cause a
distinction in the lot of Christians at the last moment, but the
distinction is founded upon the fact of their having the oil of the
Holy Spirit or not.
The third parable represents, in the opposition of the faithful
servants who traded with their pounds, and of the unfaithful servant
who hid his pound in the earth, a life of duty which proceeds from
the spiritual blessing of Christ, and again earns a new
spiritual blessing. It shows how the calling in the Spirit is
carried on, how the Spirit expresses itself in the calling.
Finally, the fourth parable represents the Lord, as He, in His
return to judgment, separates men from one another, as a shepherd
the sheep from the goats. Now He places the one at His right hand,
because in them is matured the highest piety of life in living
unity, with the completest Christian depth and spirituality; now He
places the others at his left, because they have altogether failed
both in the one respect and the other. The pious thus become
blessed, because they, on the one hand, in all their good works,
sought Christ with the deepest devotion, and loved and found Him;
while, on the other hand, they represented all their blessed peace
in Christ, with the deepest practical truth in works of mercy. That
is the perfect Christian life: hence also the perfect
watchfulness—the readiness to receive the Lord at His coming as the
accomplisher of redemption.
But with the deepest earnestness, Christ in these parables
emphasizes the doom of rejection,
which infallibly for eternity awaits the unfaithful labourers in His
service; which awaits those who do not live in His Spirit,—those,
moreover, who do
not realize in life the spiritual blessing which they receive from
Him,—those, finally, who are neither fundamentally rooted in Christ,
nor are fittingly authenticated by works of charity towards their
neighbours.
Thus, through all these parables, there echoes the word with which
Mark has closed the sayings of Jesus about the last things : ' What
I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!' This is the practical and
substantial thought of all the discourses of the Lord on the last
things—that His people must watch! They are always to be in
condition to welcome the last day with its terror, to be able to
appear with good courage before the presence of the Son of man in
His judgment. For that purpose a constant wakefulness is needed
before all things,—a continual arousing of their faculties out of
the illusion of spiritual sloth, which conceives that existing
Christian attainments are good enough,—out of the illusion of ease,
which thinks that present circumstances are permanent, into the
aspiration and the holy fear with which the advent of Christ
reasonably fills Christians. Further, there is needed a continually
renewing refreshment of eye and heart by means of this expectation ;
a continually renewed revival in the heart of the death of Christ,
of His cross, of the judgment, of His Spirit; and an exclusion from
the heart of everything which might establish in it a new spiritual
sloth, lust, and fear, and contradict the life in the death of
Christ. Finally, there is needed a more continual apprehension of
the world, and of life, in that definite manner which is in
accordance with the nature of Christ's advent,—the recognition, for
instance, of the living unity and reciprocal action between His
historical and spiritual advent; the being penetrated with the
feeling of this unity, and the discovery therein of the explanation
of the apparent contradiction between the manner and
certainty of the coming of Christ, and the uncertainty
and probable remoteness still of that advent.
The coming of Christ would not be historically what it should be,
were it not at the same time spiritual; it would not be spiritually
what it is, were it not likewise historical.
It belongs to the conception of the historical coming of Christ,
that it cannot occur until the Church is matured to the recognition,
in His appearance, of a fuller and more abundant salvation and life;
until the faithless world is matured to behold
in it a more public judgment; until thus the whole of humanity can
behold in it a more manifest spirit, so that its effect shall not be
of a sensible and chiliastic character, but a complete operation of
the Spirit of Christ in the manifestation of Christ.
On the other hand, we may not speak rightly of a spiritual future of
Christ, except we acknowledge in this future a security that He will
one day appear in person. Certainly it is possible mistakenly to
indicate the extension of Christian views and principles in a
spiritual sense, as a spiritual coming of Christ; which must not
only render its historical significance superfluous, but must even
deny it. But in such a case, the spiritual advent of Christ is not
spoken of according to the full value of the Christian conception:
it is not of an illumination, in which Christ personally appears as
the everlasting Son of humanity; not of a reconciliation, in which
He atones as the everlasting High Priest of His race; not of a
sanctification, in which He personally reigns as the Eternal King,
who establishes a kingdom and makes it manifest. But the Spirit of
the true advent of Christ is a Spirit which may be regarded as the
vital breath of His approach, which testifies of His personal life,
and establishes the personal life of those who receive Him in union
with Him, and evermore transforms and so prepares them to become one
day transplanted into the sphere of Christ's manifestation.
And thus, generally, the spiritual advent of Christ is related to
His historical advent, as the period is related to the epoch. A new
epoch comes, indeed, always with every impulse of the period which
precedes it, especially with every movement which this period makes.
Thus, also, the coming of Christ is announced in all the experiences
of His people, of His believers, but especially in all the judgments
of God upon corrupt forms of the theocratic people, in all
reformations and purifications of His Church.
The apostles were penetrated with this consciousness. They knew that
in the ground of the world's history, in the ground of their heart
and of the heart of humanity, the Christian era had already begun ;
therefore they had the presentiment of the last days, which belongs
to the outer course of the world.1
They had the consciousness that Christ had overcome sin and death,
and therewith the entire old form of this world; that He had
' See the passages on the subject in Ebrard's Treatise, referred to.
made use of the old world as the principle of a new life in the
centre of humanity, and was penetrating, in order to transform it;
that He also had thus taken possession of them, and that for that
very purpose He was also constantly drawing near to them in His
manifestation; and in this deep apprehension of Christ they said, '
He comes quickly.' Through Him they had a participation in the
Spirit of God, in whose sight a thousand years are as one day; and
in that great sense of God, by that keen perception of the eyes of
the seer, which could sweep abroad over the field of time as with
eagle's vision, they said, He comes quickly. They were pervaded with
the consciousness of the Church, in a degree of which we have no
knowledge; and they knew with certainty that the Church would greet
the Lord at His coming, as a bride the bridegroom. Therefore they
said, in their large sympathy with the Church, He will come to ui,
ice shall behold Him. Moreover, this consciousness was not
weakened by their individual Christian experience of life, for they
knew that at their death the Lord would come to them; that they
should then appear before His throne; therefore they spoke with the
most universal living truth of the nearness of the advent of Christ.
And yet they not only determined nothing about the time and about
the hour, but they distinctly opposed all chiliastic and precipitate
announcements of Christ's advent, and pointed to conditions which
made it improbable that in an outward historical sense the Lord
could be manifested thus soon.1
They thus comprehended both the Christologic certainty and nearness
of the coming of Christ, and the cosmical chronological uncertainty
and conjectural remoteness of it, in one,—a great, calm, sacred,
spiritual stimulus, which was at one with the deepest peace of the
soul; and from this consciousness arose their peculiar expressions
upon the nearness of the Lord.
We may consider these utterances as the expression of their deep,
faithful watchfulness.
Thus these utterances must needs appear to the critic as words of
fanatical self-delusion, in proportion as he has lost the perception
of that great sense of God and God's measure of time which prevailed
in the apostolic Church; of the energy of that conviction of Christ,
of their sense of fellowship and confidence in their
' See 2 Thess., and 2 Peter.
divinely happy personality and immortality. But in proportion as one
seeks to live up to the eschatologic relations of our real life, of
our world's history in its relation to Christ, in that proportion
will the understanding of the words of Christ and of His apostles be
brought about; and it will be ascertained that the Evangelist Mark
has rightly comprehended the whole doctrine of the last things,
according to their practical application in the one word—Watch!
Notes.
1. Already in those early days spiritualism had been recognised in
the Christian Church as the natural antipodes to Chiliasm, and had
restrained without being able to get rid of it. It could not do the
latter, because it was itself just as one-sided as the other, and
therefore needed just as often to be corrected by it, as on its own
side it imposed a curb on its antagonist. Chiliasm cannot wait for
the regeneration of the new world by the Spirit, and thus represents
that new world in something of a 'Fata morgana.' Spiritualism, on
the other hand, has not the sound Christian heart to be able to
expect the evolution of a new world out of the new birth which the
Spirit of Christ brings about. The former imagines that Christ is to
found a sensible spiritual kingdom—the latter that He is to
establish a purely spiritual kingdom. Thus the former forgets that
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God— that everything
that appears glorified in the new world must proceed from the Spirit
of Christ,-and must be a spiritual form pure as crystal. The latter
loses sight of the fact that the Spirit of Christ is everywhere,
according to the nature of Christ and of Christianity,—spirit and
life: that it renews the life, and accomplishes the resurrection of
the body.
2. Strauss (ii. 324) endeavours to make out that Jesus Himself had,
in an erroneous manner, fostered the notion that soon after the fall
of the Jewish sanctuary, according to Jewish notions the centre of
the present world, this world itself would come to an end, and the
Messiah would appear for judgment. This and similar suppositions
were successfully combated in the above-mentioned treatise of Ebrard,
' Adversus erroneam nonnullorum opinionem,' etc., to which we
refer the reader. Strauss endeavours to establish the above
assertion, by
showing that the evdea)<; (Matt. xxiv. 29), in its relation
with what precedes, does not allow a ' vast period' to be
interpolated between the destruction of
Jerusalem and the end of the world, according to the
representation of the Evangelist, but especially by protesting that
the word 17 yeved, v. 34, must always signify the generation;
and that thus it is determined that the Evangelist represents the
Lord as saying that the generation of His own contemporaries should
live to see the end of the world. The last assertion finds its
perfect solution in what Dorner has said in the treatise already
cited (de orations Christi eschatologicd, p. 76) upon the
meaning of the word yeved. As to the former argument, Strauss
himself has manifested no strong disposition to rely upon it. It has
been shown above, that the text certainly recognises a period of
time between the destruction of Jerusalem
and the eu#e'<o?. Moreover, if the
Totc, v. 23, be
referred to a length of time after the destruction of
Jerusalem, the true importance of the
words Ko\of$a>drja-ovTai al fjfi-epai eicelvai must at once
be rendered even more prominent than has hitherto been the case.
Fritzsche, in his Commentary on Maitliew (710), has shown
that the shortening of the days referred to may be understood not
merely of the shortening of the time, but als6 of the contraction of
the individual days themselves. ' Certe Rabbi- nici magistri
diei,' he says, 'quo mortuus esset Abasus rex, detractas esse decem
horas tradunt (cf. Lightfoot, ad h. 1.) ne quis homini pessimo
lessum posset facere.' But what can such a shortening of the
individual days of judgment signify here, other than the continuance
of the judgment in a suppressed and broken form, distinct from that
which at first appeared? Consequently the Lord distinguishes the
days of uninterrupted judgment, or the days of the great
tribulation; and the shortened days of judgment, in which the
chastisement of the theocratic church continues in a subdued form,
and especially in the fact that as well the heathens as the Jews
must do without a centre of the kingdom of God upon earth, or that
Jerusalem shall be trodden under foot
of the heathens, whilst the Gentile Christians everywhere are
aroused and endangered by false symptoms of the coming Messiah, till
their time also is fulfilled, till also the judgment on the heathen
world in its antichristianity is matured. Dorner (p. 73) has
observed with keen censure, that Strauss, ' nimis avide duplici
virga Evangelium caedere tentans,'
involves himself in a contradiction; assuming at one time that the
two first gospels were written long after the destruction of
Jerusalem, and then again that the
Evangelists had reported with solicitude the words of Christ even
then, according to whose tenor the end of the world was to follow
soon upon the destruction of Jerusalem,
although these predictions must by that time have already
been proved erroneous. Thus, according to p. 345, the texts in
Daniel ix. 27, and others, are to be referred exclusively to the
desecration of the holy place under Antiochus Epiphanes. According
to p. 348, however, they ought to be described in the texts Dan.
vii.-xii., as calamities in other places, which announce and
accompany the day of the coming of Jehovah, or were to precede the
advent of the Messianic kingdom of the Holy One. Thus it is said, p.
339 : ' To consider the judgment of the world, the coming of Christ,
as anything successive, is the directest contradiction of the mode
of representation in the New Testament.' On the other hand, it is
said, p. 352, upon the words of John iii. 18,77877 iceKpirai:
' This only asserts thus much, that the assignment to every one of
his merited destiny is not reserved till the future judgment at the
end of things; but every one bears in himself, in his internal
condition even now, the fate meet for him: therefore an impending
solemn award of judgment is not excluded.' The rest partakes of
similar characteristics.
3. According to Stier, the sayings of the Lord concerning the last
things ought to be distributed into three sections, which represent
an orderly chronological sequence of escha- tologic events.1
First of all, p. 249, he says that the Lord treats of the
destruction of Jerusalem, chap. xxiv.
1-28; secondly, of His other proper (mediatorial) coming to the
public opening of His kingdom for His then assembled elect, chap,
xxiv. 1-25, 30; thirdly, of the great day of judgment of the King, '
in full power and glory over all the people at the end of the
world,' or of the last coming of Christ at the last day, Matt.
1 [It is due, however, to Stier to
say that he counts this a misunderstanding of his view, and does '
not intend a strictly defining and adjusting chronology of the
future, but only a progression in the stages here placed in
juxtaposition, in which, at the same time, the whole is always
reflected in each.' That is to say, he maintains the perspective
view of prophecy, and holds that this is not inconsistent with the
dignity of our Lord's person. —ED.]
xxv. 31—46. In a similar manner Olshausen characterizes the sections
(see the Commentary, 908—918). Opposed to this, however, is
the fact, first, that the consideration in Matt. xxiv. 14
goes at once to the end of the world ; secondly, that,
according to chap. xxiv. 22, a period of time is specified after the
destruction of Jerusalem; thirdly,
that in ver. 29 the most definite features of character are
declared of the end of the world, and that here already all peoples
definitely express the presentiment that the judgment is now at
hand; fourthly, that in ver. 33 the description is apparently
closed with a retrospect and an application, to which belong the
parables which follow, although they certainly serve more fully to
unfold the doctrine of the last judgment; especially also to show
that, after all the warnings of Christ, many men will still incur
the judgment. It is indeed not to be denied, that the parable of the
wise and foolish virgins has features which, in relation to those of
the last parable of judgment, seem to point to the continuance of
the judgment of Christ even to the last day. Apart from what has
been observed, there are great difficulties in conceiving of the
return of Christ to the establishment of the first resurrection (the
kingdom of a thousand years), as an external visible thing,—not to
refer to the Augsburg Confession. Especially there is found in
Scripture no intimation of a second departure of Christ for a second
ascension.
4. With this section must be compared the description of the
destruction of Jerusalem in Josephus,
in the history of the Jewish war; the Apocalypse also, and the
result of the later Geology.
What do YOU think ?
Submit Your Comments For Posting Here
..Will Be Spam
Filtered and Posted Shortly..
|
