'And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies,
then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. 21. Then
let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and
let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and
let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.
22. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things
which are written may he fulfilled. 23. But woe unto
them that are with child, and to them that give suck,
in those days! for there shall be great distress in the
land, and wrath upon this people. 24. 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 be fulfilled. 25. And there shall be signs in
the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon
the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea
and the waves roaring; 26. Men's hearts failing them
for fear, and for looking after those things which are
coming on the earth; for the powers of heaven shall be
shaken. 27. And then shall they see the Son of man
coming in a cloud, with power and great glory. 28. And
when these things begin to come to pass, then look up,
and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth
nigh. 29. And He spake to them a parable; Behold the
fig-tree, and all the trees; 30. When they now shoot
forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer
is now nigh at hand. 31. So likewise ye, when ye see
these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of
God is nigh at hand. 32. Verily I say unto you, This
generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled.
33. Heaven and earth shall pass away; but My words
shall not pass away. 34. And take heed to yourselves,
lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with
surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life,
and so that day come upon you unawares. 35. For as a
snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face
of the whole earth. 36. Watch ye therefore, and pray
always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all
these things that shall come to pass, and to stand
before the Son of Man.'--LUKE xxi. 20-36.
This discourse of our Lord's is in answer to the disciples' double
question as to the time of the overthrow of the Temple and the
premonitory signs of its approach. The former is answered with the
indefiniteness which characterises prophetic chronology; the
latter is plainly answered in verse 20.
The whole passage divides itself in four well-marked sections.
I. There is the prediction of the fall of Jerusalem (vs. 20-24). The
'sign' of her 'desolation' was to be the advance of the enemy to her
walls. Armies had been many times encamped round her, and many times
been scattered; but this siege was to end in capture, and no angel
of the Lord would stalk by night through the sleeping host, to
stiffen sleep into death, nor would any valour of the besieged
avail. Their cause was to be hopeless from the first. Flight was
enjoined. Usually the inhabitants of the open country took refuge in
the fortified capital when invasion harrowed their fields; but this
time, for 'them that are in the country' to 'enter therein' was to
throw away their last chance of safety. The Christians obeyed, and
fled, as we all know, across Jordan to Pella. The rest despised
Jesus' warning--if they knew it,---and perished.
Mark the reason for the exhortation not to resist, but to flee:
These are days of vengeance, that all things which are written may
be fulfilled.' That is to say, the besiegers are sent by God to
execute His righteous and long-ago-pronounced judgments. Therefore
it is vain to struggle against them. Behind the Roman army is the
God of Israel. To dash against their cohorts is to throw one's self
on the thick bosses of the Almighty's buckler, and none who dare do
that can 'prosper.' Submission to His retributive hand is the only
way to escape being crushed by it. Chastisement accepted is
salutary, but kicking against it drives the goad deeper into the
rebellious limb.
So great is the agony to be, that what should be a joy, the birth of
children, will be a woe, and the sweet duties of motherhood a curse,
while the childless will be happier than the fugitives burdened with
helpless infancy. We should note, too, that the 'distress' which
comes upon the land is presented in darker colours, and traced to
its origin, in (God's)'wrath' dealt out 'unto this people.' Happier
they who 'fall by the edge of the sword' than they who are led
'captive into all the nations.'
A gleam of hope shoots through the stormy prospect, for the treading
down of Jerusalem by the Gentiles has a term set to it. It is to
continue 'till the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.' That
expression is important, for it clearly implies that these 'times'
are of considerable duration, and it thus places a period of
undefined extent between the fall of Jerusalem and the subsequent
prophecy. The word used for 'times' generally carries with it the
notion of opportunity, and here seems to indicate that the break-up
of the Jewish national existence would usher in a period in which
the 'Gentiles' would have the kingdom of God offered to them. The
history of the world since the city fell is the best comment on this
saying.
II. Since the 'times of the Gentiles' are thus of indefinite
duration, they make a broad line of demarcation between what
precedes and what follows them. Clearly the prophecy in verses 25-27
is separated in time from the fall of Jerusalem, and it is no
objection to that view that the separation is not more emphatically
pointed out by our Lord. These verses distinctly refer to His last
coming to judgment. Verse 27 is too grand and too distinctly cast in
the mould of the other predictions of that coming to be interpreted
of His ideal coming in the judgments on the city.
The 'signs in sun and moon and stars' may refer in accordance with a
familiar symbolism, to the overthrow of royalties and dominions; the
sea roaring may, in like manner, symbolise agitations among the
people; but the 'cloud' and the 'power and great glory' with which
the Son of man comes, can mean nothing else than what they mean in
other prophetic passages; namely, His visible appearance, invested
with the shekinah light, and wielding divine authority before the
gaze of a world.
The city's fall, then, was the initial stage of a process, the
duration of which is undefined here, but implied to be considerable,
and of which the closing stage is the personal coming of Jesus. The
same conclusion is supported by verse 28, which treats that fall as
the beginning of the fulfilment of the prophecy.
III. That verse forms a transition to the section containing the
illustrative parable and the reiteration of the assurance that
Christ's words would certainly be fulfilled. The disciples might
naturally quake at the prospect, and wonder how they could face the
reality. Jesus gives them strong words of cheer, which apply to all
dreaded contingencies and to all social convulsions. What is a
messenger of destruction to Christless men and institutions is a
harbinger of full 'redemption' to His servants. Earthquakes but open
their prison doors and loose their bands, they should not shake
their hearts.
Historically the fall of Jerusalem was a powerful factor in the
deliverance of the Church from Jewish swaddling-bands which hampered
its growing limbs. For all Christians the destruction of what can
perish brings fuller vision and possession of what cannot be shaken.
To Christ's friends, all things work for good. So the parable which
at first sight seems strangely incongruous becomes blessedly
significant and fitting. The gladsome blossoming of the trees, the
herald of the glories of summer, is a strange emblem of such a
tragedy, and summer itself is a still stranger one of that solemn
last judgment. But the might of humble trust in Him who comes to
judge makes His coming summer-like in the light and warmth with
which it floods the soul, and the rich fruitage which it produces
there.
Observe, too, that the parable confirms the idea of a process having
stages, for the lesson of the blossoming fig-tree is not that summer
has come, but that it is nigh.
The solemn assurance in verse 32, made more weighty by the 'Verily I
say,' seems at first sight to bring the final judgment within the
lifetime of the generation of the hearers. But it is noteworthy that
the expression 'till all things are fulfilled' is almost verbally
identical with that in verse 22, which refers only to the
destruction of Jerusalem, and is therefore most naturally
interpreted as having the same restricted application here. The
difference between the two phrases is significant, since in the
former the certainty of fulfilment is deduced from the fact of 'the
things' being written--that is, they must be accomplished because
they have been foretold in Scripture,--whereas in the latter Christ
rests the certainty of fulfilment on His own word. That majestic
assurance in verse 33 comes well from His lips, and makes claim that
His word shall outlast the whole present material order, and be
fulfilled in every detail. Think of a mere man saying that!
IV. Exhortations corresponding to the predictions follow. Christ's
revelation of the future was neither meant to gratify idle curiosity
nor to supply a timetable in advance, but to minister encouragement
and to lead to watchfulness. Whether 'that day' (ver. 34) is
understood of the fall of Jerusalem or of the final coming of the
Lord, it will come 'as a snare' upon men who are absorbed with the
earth which they inhabit. They will be captured by it, as a covey of
birds in a field busily picking up grain, are netted by one sudden
fling of the fowler's net. A wary eye would have saved them.
The exhortation is as applicable to us, for, whatever are our views
about unfulfilled prophecy, death comes to us all at a time which we
know not, as the Book of Ecclesiastes, using the same figure, says;
'Man knoweth not his time ... as the birds that are caught in the
snare.' Hearts must be kept above the grosser satisfactions of sense
and the less gross cares of life, being neither stupefied with
gorging earth's good, nor preoccupied with its gnawing anxieties,
both of which are destructive of the clear realisation of the
certain future. We are to preserve an attitude of wakefulness and of
expectancy, and, as the sure way to it, and to clearing our hearts
of perishable delights and shortsighted, self-consuming cares, we
are to keep them in a continual posture of supplication. If our
study of unfulfilled prophecy does that for us, it will have done
what Jesus means it to do; if it does not it matters little what
theories about its chronology we may adopt.
The two stages which we have tried to point out in this passage are
clearly marked at the close, where escaping 'all these things that
shall come to pass' and standing 'before the Son of man' are
distinguished. True, both stages were to be included in the
experience of Christ's hearers, but they are none the less separate
stages.
Luke's version of this great discourse gives less prominence to the
final coming than does Matthew's, and does not blend the two stages
so inextricably together; but it gives no hint of the duration of
the 'times of the Gentiles,' and might well leave the impression
that these were brief. Now in this close setting together of a
nearer and a much more remote future, with little prominence given
to the interval between, our Lord is but bringing His prophecy into
line with the constant manner of the older prophets. They and He
paint the future in perspective, and the distance, seen behind the
foreground, seems nearer than it really is. The spectator does not
know how many weary miles have to be traversed before the distant
blue hills are to be reached, nor what deep gorges lie between.
Such bringing together of events far apart in time of fulfilment
rests in part on the fact that there have been many 'days of the
Lord,' many 'comings of Christ,' each of which is a result on a
small scale of the same retributive action of the Judge of all, as
shall be manifested on the largest scale in the last and greatest
day of the Lord. Therefore the true use of all these predictions is
that which Christ enforces here; namely, that they should lead us to
prayerful watchfulness and to living above earth, its goods and
cares.