AN INTERPRETATION DISPUTED.
Dear Brother: —I have to thank you for your attention to my inquiry concerning the predictions of our Lord recorded in Matthew 24. I had long before concluded that you had wholly forgotten it, and so was agreeably undeceived. Nevertheless, admitting your interpretation to be correct, you have, for me, reencompassed the subject with difficulties which the view of it I presented to you seemed to obviate. Allow me briefly to state these. —If the tribulation ended A. D. 71; if the “luminaries” of verse 29 were “Hebrew,” and were then “eclipsed,” how are we to harmonise the prophecy with the facts in the case? For, after declaring that “the powers of the heavens shall be shaken,” our Lord continues, “and then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and glory.” That the events predicted in verse 29 and 30 are represented as immediately consecutive, cannot, I think, be denied without forcing the words from their natural and obvious meaning. To suppose that 1800 years were intended to elapse between the shaking of the political heaven referred to and the “then” of verse 30, is to violate the simple unconstrained sense of the passage. Then in regard to the “generation” intended. “Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things (doubtless those He had enumerated) shall be fulfilled.” According to Luke, our Lord continues: “When these things begin to come to pass then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh,” and illustrating his injunction by the parable of the fig tree, adds, “so likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.” Here the fulfilment of “these things” is connected with the advent of the kingdom as an earnest of its nearness. How unmeaning if they were fulfilled in the first century! “Verily,” he goes on to say, “This generation (could it be the one he was addressing?) shall not pass away till all be fulfilled.” Is it not evident that the coming of the kingdom is included in the “all?” And this was still unmanifested when the last of that “generation” lay down to sleep in the dust.
These difficulties attending your theory, dear brother, are to me at present inseparable. In the one I reported to you, they were annihilated by simply supposing the “tribulation” co-extensive with “the times of the Gentiles,” and the “generation” that which should witness the “signs” coming immediately after. I see nothing in Luke’s testimony to refute such a supposition. These, “he writes,” are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. This is making the days of vengeance terminate only with the woes of Israel. But you say that verses 16, 20, and 21 of Matthew 24, show that the tribulation must be confined to the “those days indicated.” They show certainly that it would be great, excessive then, but they scarcely prove that it must terminate with them. Those days of terror and distress were “shortened for the elect’s sake,” but we know that Palestine has been prostrate under the sway of Gentile oppression ever since, whilst her children have been wanderers, persecuted and tyrannised over by their Gentile rulers. Israel did not drink to the dregs the cup of God’s vengeance, Isaiah 51: 17, in A.D. 71. Jerusalem’s “warfare” or “appointed time” was not then “accomplished.”— Isaiah 40: 2. Her “tribulation,” what has it been but her subjection to Gentile tyrants, and this can only end when her own King shall return to reign in the midst of her. You say the “signs” must not be looked for in the natural heavens. I do not expect them there. But I think they are as characteristic of the time when “the thrones shall be cast down,”—Daniel 7: 9, as of that to which you apply them. When the “Beast” is “slain” and “destroyed” and the “dominion taken” from the “little Horn” the Imperial Sun of Europe will be extinguished, and the misleading light of the Papal Moon quenched in darkness. Then when these are “destroyed in the brightness of his coming,” the Son of Man shall be seen “in power and great glory.”
I must apologise for the length of these remarks. They have extended farther than I purposed. I shall be obliged if you will consider them at your leisure; and if you can dissipate the difficulties that appear to me to attach to your interpretation of these deeply interesting predictions, I shall be very willing to accept it. Meanwhile believe me, dear brother,
In faith and hope affectionately,
PERSIS.
October 26th, 1852.
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THE PROPHECY OF MOUNT OLIVET.
“The Tribulation of those days”—“The End—“Your Redemption draweth nigh”—“The Kingdom of God nigh at hand”—“Then,” explained.
The difficulty of our correspondent, “Perside la bien-aime’e” in relation to “the tribulation of those days,” consisting in the destruction of the city, the sanctuary—Daniel 9: 26, and the mighty and holy people—Daniel 8: 24, by the Prince’s people, seems to rest on the import of the word “then,” which is assumed to be immediate consecutiveness. That is, that the appearance of the sign of the Son of Man in heaven is immediately to follow the tribulation and the eclipse of the luminaries, which Persis does not regard as the sun, moon, stars, and powers of the heavens of the Hebrew Zion; nor indeed of the “natural heavens;” but of the heavens of the Roman system of nations existing at the end of “the times of the Gentiles.”
What I have said on page 27 of our last volume (September 1852) in reply to Persis need not be repeated here. The reader can refer to it and study it at his leisure. In the letter before us, Persis cannot see how the eclipsed luminaries can be Hebrew, because the Son of Man’s sign, &c., and the advent of the kingdom, said to be nigh at hand, did not then appear. The interpretation of the prophecy of Mount Olivet, evidently to my mind, perplexes Persis for the same reason that all other interpreters have failed to give a consistent and intelligible exegesis to it—they fail to perceive that it is a prophecy of things pertaining exclusively to Israel’s commonwealth. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, behold your house shall be left with you desolate. For I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah.” In this the epochs, beginning and ending the prophecy which followed, are indicated—first, the desolation of Jerusalem’s house; and lastly, the pronouncing of Jesus blessed by the Hebrew nation at his appearing. “Ye shall say;” that is, Israel shall say, Blessed be Jesus of Nazareth. “Jesus spake to the multitude and to his disciples,” concerning those who sat in Moses’ seat, or throne. In speaking to them, he denounced the government of the Gentiles in Israel, but the Scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites, so far as they had to do with public affairs. The twenty-third of Matthew sufficiently establishes this point.
In the next chapter he confirms his discourse to two disciples who came to him “privately,” and sought to know more particularly concerning the things he had been previously treating of before the multitude. “Tell us,” said they, “when shall these things be? And what the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” The “sayings” which followed were addressed to them for their especial benefit. “Take heed,” said Jesus, “that no man deceive you.” “Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that ye be not troubled.” Having spoken of international wars, famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, he told them that these were the beginning of sorrows; and that then, or afterwards, “they,” the Scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites, should deliver them up to be afflicted and killed. Take the cases of James and Paul by way of illustration. “When, therefore,” continued the Lord, “ye shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the Prophet Daniel, stand in the holy place, then let them which be in Judea flee to the mountains: . . . but pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day; for THEN shall be great tribulation such as was not from the beginning of the world (kosmou a thing constituted; it may therefore be rendered of the State or Commonwealth) to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh, (of the carcase spoken of in verse 28) be saved. Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. Behold I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold He (the Son of Man) is in the desert, believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall the suddenness of the coming of the Son of Man be. For wheresoever the carcase is (that is, Judah) there will the eagles (the Prince’s army of Romans) be gathered together.”
Now, it is clear from all this, that “those days” referred to in verse 22, were days contemporary with the life-time of the persons whom Jesus was addressing, and not of us or of our successors; and that during their currency there was to be a “tribulation,” or “distress in the land,” unequalled in Israel’s history before, or by anything to happen to them after. There is, indeed, “a time of trouble” yet to come, which will transcend anything that has befallen mankind since the Flood; but that is to affect the Gentiles—Daniel 12: 1—by the sword of Israel and the plagues of God. Israel will not then be destroyed as they were in the day of their “great tribulation;” but they will be delivered. It will, doubtless be “the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he will be saved out of it”—Jeremiah 30: 7—a characteristic which distinguishes the two troubles of Israel; for in the last the yoke of oppression is to be broken from off Israel’s neck, “and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him.”
One thing, I suspect, that has misled Persis in regard to the time of the tribulation, is the phrase, “the end of the world,” in the third verse. There is a sense in which the tribulation was to continue to the end of the world, but not in the Gentile sense of the phrase. The Greek is; ti to seemeion tees synteleias tou aioonos? That is, “what the sign of the conclusion of the age?” Paul says, “Now once in the end of the world hath Christ appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”—Hebrews 9: 26. In the same verse he speaks of “the foundation of the world;” but he uses a different word for “world.” He says not apo kataboles aioonos, but kosmou. If he had spoken of Christ’s suffering often from the foundation of the age, he would have said ap’ aioonos; but he went further back, and supposed him suffering often from the time of the institution of sacrifice, when the Kosmos was arranged, and Adam’s sin was covered, if he had entered the divine presence with the blood of others, as Aaron and his successors did. The disciples did not inquire what was the sign of the end of the Kosmos, but of the end of that Age constituted by the law. The great tribulation was to continue to the end of the Aioon—of the Mosaic world, consisting of the Jewish Heavens and Earth, or Commonwealth of Israel.
The apostle Peter writing to his fellow-countrymen says, “THE END of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer”—1 Peter 4: 7. He was one to whom the sayings of Jesus were addressed. The Lord had given him a sign of “the end.” It was this. “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world (oikoumenee, the territory inhabited by the Roman system of nations) for a testimony to all the nations, and then shall come THE END.” Paul writing to the Colossians tells us that this sign had been accomplished in his time. “The hope laid up in the heavens, and contained in the word of the truth of the gospel,” says he, “is come in all the world” (kosmos), or as he expresses it elsewhere, “was preached to every creature under the heaven”—Colossians 1: 6, 23. All the apostles knew this; for they had been ordered to “go and preach the gospel to every creature,” and they had done it. Therefore James exhorts his countrymen and brethren in the faith, saying, “Be patient unto the coming of the Lord . . . stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh”—James 5: 7-8. They all knew that it could not be far off; because the gospel of the kingdom had been preached to every creature under the Roman heaven, or government.
The “all things” whose “end” was “at hand,” were the things “made” or constituted by the Mosaic law, and which, having “waxed old,” were “ready to vanish away.” They were the things to be removed by shaking the heaven and the earth, that the unshakable things might remain—Hebrews 12: 26-27. They were the elements or rudiments of the world, “the weak and beggarly elements” to which the Galatians, Jews in Christ, desired again to be in bondage. The end of these was at hand; but in order to abolish them, it was necessary to break up the commonwealth of Israel, to accomplish which the “great tribulation” was indispensable.
But James says, “the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.” He did not say “the appearing of the Lord,” but only that the coming of the Son of Man, the sign of which and the end of the age, was the gathering of the Eagles—Deuteronomy 28: 49—to prey upon Israel’s carcase—Deuteronomy 28: 26. Jesus told the apostles that they “should not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come”—Matthew 10: 33; not with power and great glory, but with his Roman Eagles—Matthew 22: 7—to “baptise” their adversaries and his “with fire”—even with the fire of Gehenna, or of Hinnom’s vale. The apostles did not know when the “appearing” would be, its “times and seasons” being hid in God: but of the coming to destroy Jerusalem and her house, they could tell of its near approach.
Having ascertained that the great tribulation, or “distress in the land, and wrath upon Israel,” was concurrent with the lifetime of the disciples who were taught by the Lord himself, we are obliged to fix the eclipse and fall of the political luminaries at that crisis; for it was to be “immediately after the tribulation of those days.” The eclipse and fall were the result of the tribulation which shook “the powers of the heavens,” civil and ecclesiastical. The desolating abomination spoken of by Daniel the prophet, was the agency employed by the Son of Man, the Prince of Israel, in afflicting them and shaking their polity to pieces. Alluding to these calamities, Isaiah apostrophises Jerusalem in words of consolation divinely expressed, saying, “They that despised thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shall call thee the City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee—I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting or destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise. Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified”—Isaiah 9: 14, 33.
But Persis thinks that the eclipse and fall cannot have taken place immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem’s house, because it cannot be truly said that the disciples’ redemption, and the kingdom of God were nigh at hand. With all deference, however, I think it may. The redemption was that of the disciples addressed. Some of them were to be killed, others imprisoned, and all to be persecuted in different ways by the Jews and their rulers. These could not put to death and imprison Gentile believers, because they had no power or authority over them. The Gentile governments persecuted Gentile Christians: and the Jewish rulers those of their own nation. Hence Paul says to the Gentile portion of the church at Thessalonica, “Ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judea are in Christ Jesus; for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, as they have of the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins always: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost”—1 Thessalonians 2: 14-16. This was the “wrath to come,” referred to by John the baptiser, which was to break the power of the Jewish persecutor, and so redeem the churches in Judea from his oppression and misrule. When the disciples in these churches saw the fall of Jerusalem approaching (indicated by the things predicted “beginning to come to pass”) they looked up, and exalted their heads, as men do when they see deliverance coming from any great embarrassment or distress.
As to the kingdom of God being nigh at hand when the disciples saw the things predicted, this is my interpretation. The more condensed narrative of Matthew from the twenty-first to the twenty-fifth chapter inclusive, and especially his twenty-fourth, is scattered over Luke’s account from chapter seventeen to the twenty-second inclusive. He begins his reference to the Mount Olivet prophecy in the twentieth verse of the seventeenth chapter, telling us that when the Pharisees demanded of Jesus “when the kingdom of God should come?”—he replied that “the kingdom of God cometh not with observation,” so as to attract every one’s attention. Then in the next verse, Luke records Christ’s words found in Matthew 24: 23. “If any man shall say unto you Lo, here is the Christ, or there; believe it not.” He does not, however, insert the words “the Christ;” but says simply and negatively, “Neither shall they say, Lo, here! or lo there.” Lo here, or lo there, what? It might be asked. The answer would be, “Lo here the Christ, or the kingdom of God,” which are different forms of expressing the same thing. But why should people on the land not run hither and thither after the Christ or the kingdom? “Because,” said Jesus, “the kingdom of God, O Pharisees, is among you,” (entos hymoon,) for there is no kingdom in the absence of God’s Christ; Christ and his dominion being inseparable. He is among you without ostentation, and you receive him not. Then turning to his disciples in continuance of the subject, he said to them, “The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.” You will desire to see him appear; but he will not come “before you have gone over the cities of Israel” in that way. But men knowing this your desire “shall say unto you, ‘See here, or see there,’” he is: “go not after, nor follow them: for as the lightning that lighteneth out of one part under heaven; so shall also the Son of Man be in his day”—in one of his days: in one of them he will come with his eagles with the suddenness of the lightning’s flash; in another, he will appear in the brightness of its glory: so that you will need no “here,” or “there,” to find him.
When the son of man came with his Eagles, “the kingdom of God was nigh at hand;” but when he appears “in power and great glory,” the kingdom of God will be apparent also—its advent will be an accomplished fact. The kingdom nigh, and the kingdom come, do not signify the same thing. The kingdom was nigh in the sense in which James said, the Lord’s coming was nigh; but not in that of his “coming in his kingdom,” mentioned by the thief on the cross; or of “his appearing and kingdom,” referred to by Paul. King and kingdom are often used interchangeably in the scriptures. For instance, Luke says, that “when Jesus was come nigh to Jerusalem riding on the ass’s colt, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice, saying, “Blessed be the king that cometh in Jehovah’s name;” while Mark in narrating the same event, says that they cried saying, “Blessed be the kingdom of our father David that cometh in the name of Jehovah.” I conclude then, that “the kingdom of God was nigh at hand,” when “the king,” though invisible, was supervising the operations of the siege of his rebellious capital.
As to the word “then,” tote, I do not see that it presents any difficulty in the case; or that it necessitates immediate consecutiveness, or contemporaneousness. We may say with perfect correctness, General Washington was elected President, then General Jackson, then Mr. Polk, and then General Pierce, without its being supposed that they were immediately following one another with no President between. The “thens” would be generally understood as indicative of indefinite succession, and leaving the precise time of their several reigns undetermined. This is the fact in relation to Matthew’s, or rather Christ’s use of the “thens” in chapter 24: 30. The eclipse and fall of the sun, moon and stars, and the shaking of the powers of Judah’s heavens, or polity, were “immediately after the tribulation of those days” of “distress in the land; and then,” or afterwards, “the sign of the Son of Man shall appear in the heaven; and then,” or after that appearance of the sign, “the tribes of the land (hai phylai tees gees) shall mourn in his presence; and they,” the tribes, “shall see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of the heaven with power and great glory.” This is the order of events in relation to the Jewish nation. Between the overthrow of its polity and the appearing of the sign of the Son of Man, it would be favoured with no visible manifestation of Jehovah, as in the days of old. The interval was to be occupied by “the times of the Gentiles,” during which Jerusalem, the great king’s city, was to be trodden under foot until the time came to recompense them as they had meted out to Israel and the Saints. Between the events of the 29th and 30th verses, 1800 years have nearly elapsed. The interval will soon be filled up, as we believe. We await with Israel “the sign,” whose signification will work commotion in the Jewish mind, that in rejecting Jesus of Nazareth as king of the Jews, they have put from them Jehovah’s Christ. Then looking upon Him whom they have pierced, will Israel mourn and be in bitterness for him as the first-born of God and his nation—Zechariah 12: 10; Revelation 1: 7. The Son of Man then acknowledged as their king, will enter on the work of building again the dwelling-place of Davis now in ruins, and setting it up, as in the days of old—Amos 9: 11; Acts 15: 16. He will then gather the still dispersed from all the nations; and if any of them have been driven to the utmost parts of the heaven, he will send his angels (or messengers) with a great sound of a trumpet (making loud and general proclamation) and they shall gather his elect (people even all Israel) from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other, and “bring them into the land which their fathers possessed, and they shall possess it,” as the Lord has said by his servant Moses—Compare Matthew 24: 31 with Deuteronomy 30: 1-5.
All the things predicted as pertaining to the days of vengeance were fulfilled in the tribulation of those days. Judah’s troubles since the overthrow of the Hebrew polity, have been no greater than those of the saints at the hand of the Little Horn, which is “the Devil and Satan” to them both. Eighteen hundred years is too extended a period to be styled “days of vengeance.” Eleven hundred thousand Jews perished in the siege of Jerusalem, and ninety thousand were sold for slaves. This was emphatically vengeance which before or since Judah never experienced so terribly, nor ever will again. But here I must conclude, hoping that the difficulties of Persis have been met, and effectually removed.
EDITOR.
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