Reflections on the ruin that should come upon the Jews. 243 clxi. so sudden and conspicuous also shall the coming SECT. of the Son of man be, both in his appearance to the destruction of Jerusalem, and to the final Mat. 28 For wheresoever judgment. (Compare Luke xvii. 24, p. 62.) XXIV. the carcase is, there And very extensive also will the desolation be; 23 will the eagles be gathered together. for, as I formerly told you, Luke xvii. 37, p. 64), wheresoever the dead carcase is, there will the eagles naturally be gathered together; and wherever the obstinate enemies of my kingdom are, they shall be sought out and destroyed: and here in particular I will send the Roman eagles against them, who shall consume and devour them as a helpless prey, not only at Jerusalem, but over the face of the whole country; and afterwards in some more distant regions, where the greatest numbers of Jews are settled ". m IMPROVEMENT. xxi. 21. If our Lord urges his disciples, with such speedy and solicitous Luke haste, to flee from the sword of God's temporal judgments, how much greater diligence should we give to flee from the wrath to come! What are any of the little interests of life, that out of re- Mark gard to them we should be willing to continue one moment longer exposed to a danger which may sink us into everlasting perdition. and despair! 15, 16 xxiv. 21. We have here a lively description of that aggravated ruin which Mat. was brought upon the Jews for neglecting Christ; even great tribulation, such as had never, from the very beginning of the world, fallen upon any other nation, nor shall ever be equalled. Thus was his blood upon them, and their children. (Mat. xxvii. 25.) May we never know what it is to have this blood crying against us for trampling it under foot as an unholy thing! (Heb. x. 29.) For surely to the Jews, who thus rejected the counsel of God against 7, 8 themselves, all these things which they suffered were but the beginning of sorrows; and the famine and sedition, pestilence and slaughter, by which so many thousands perished, served only to consign m In some more distant regions, &c.] There may perhaps be an oblique intimation in this passage of the slaughter afterwards made on the Jews elsewhere, and particularly under Adrian and Trajan; when what had been foretold by Moses (Deut. xxviii. 49, & seq.) was remarkably fulfilled, and as an eagle flies upon its prey, their enemies pursued them to destruction; and the calamities they underwent were such, that (as Dio Cassius inVOL. VII. II h forms us, Hist. lib. 69) 50,000 were slain, a Er 244 cixi. Jesus describes the tribulation of those days. SECT. Consign them over to infinitely more terrible indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, which will at last fall on every soul of man that doth evil, whether Jew or Gentile. (Rom. ii. 8, 9.) Mark These unhappy creatures eagerly listened to the very name of a xil Messiah, by whomsoever it was assumed; while they rejected him 21, 22 whom God had sent them, and who had so long, and with so much importunity, been renewing to them the offers of life and salvation. May none of us ever know the sad impatience with which condemned sinners will wish, and wish in vain, for those Mat. overtures and messages of grace which they now despise! In that xxiv. 28. sense, wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together: wherever there is the like unbelief and impenitence, Mark there will be in its degree the like ruin. Christ has graciously xin. 25. told us these things before: may we humbly attend to the warning, that none of this terror and destruction may ever come upon us! SECT. Luke SECT. CLXII. Christ describes the total destruction of the Jewish state by strong figures, many of them literally suiting the day of judgment: to the mention of which he proceeds, declaring the particular time of it unknown. Mat. XXIV. 29-36. Mark XIII. 24-32. Luke XXI. 25-33. LUKE XXI. 25. OUR UR Lord proceeded in the awful repreclxii. sentation of the judgments that were coming on Jerusalem, and said, Before this desolaXXI.25. tion shall be completely come, there shall be (as I told you, ver. 11) some extraordinary signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; eclipses, comets, and surprising meteors; and on the earth there shall be anguish and distress of nations; the sea and the proud waves thereof roaring, and breaking in upon the land with an irresistible 26 inundation; While men shall be almost expiring with fear, and overwhelmed with the sad expectation of those calamitous things which are coming upon the land: for this shall not be like former invasions or captivities, which only produced some transient disorders in the state, or at a Expiring with fear.] This is the literal rendering of anofixovlwr ano çox. -The signs here spoken of seem to be some most LUKE XXI. 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. of the latest of those mentioned in the writers referred to above in notes 8 and h on ver. 10, 11, p. 232. Messengers should be sent to assemble his elect. MAT. XXIV. 29, Immediately after the moon shall not give her heavens shall be sha 245 SECT. cixi. Luke most, an interruption in the government for a XXIV. 29 For immediately after the affliction of those days, Mat. tribulation of those which I have now been describing", the sun shall days, shall the sun be as it were be darkened, and the moon shall not darkened, and the seem to give her usual light; and the stars shall light; and the stars fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens, shall fall from heaven all the mighty machines and strong movements and the powers of the above, shall be shaken and broken in pieces; ken. [MARK XIII. 24, that is, according to the sublimity of that pro25. LUKE XXI.—26.1 phetic language to which you have been accustomed, the whole civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the nation shall not only be shocked, 30 And then shall but totally dissolved. And then shall there evi- 30 appear the sign of the dently appear such a remarkable hand of provi. ven: and then shall dence in avenging my quarrel upon this sinful all the tribes of the people, that it shall be like the sign of the Son of earth mourn, and they man in heaven at the last day; and all the tribes man coming in the of the land shall then mourn, and they shall see the clouds of heaven, with Son of man coming as it were in the clouds of heapower and great glo- vend, with power and great glory; for that cery. [MARK XIII. 26. lestial LUKE XXI. 27.] army which shall appear in the air marshalled round the city, shall be a sure token to Son of man in hea shall see the Son of b Immediately after the affliction of those days.] Archbishop Tillotson, and Brennius, with many other learned interpreters, imagine that our Lord here makes the transition from the destruction of Jerusalem, which had been the subject of bis discourse thus far, to the general judgment but I think, as it would, on the one hand, be very harsh to suppose all the sufferings of the Jewish nation, in all ages, to be called the tribulation of those days; so it would, on the other hand, be equally so to say that the general judgment, which probably will not commence till at least a thousand years after their restoration, will happen immediately after their sufferings; nor can I find any one instance in which wg is used in such a strange latitude.-What is said below (in Mat. xxiv. 34; Mark xiii. 30; and Luke xxi. 32; p. 247) seems also an unanswerable objection against such an interpretation.-I am obliged therefore to explain this section as in the paraphrase; though I acknowledge many of the figures used may with more literal propriety be applied to the last day, to which there them may be a remote, though not an imme- c The sun shall be darkened, &c.] It was d Coming in the clouds of heaven.] Sudden and irresistible destruction, in which much of the hand of God evidently appears, is (as Dr. Whitby justly observes) often expressed by God's coming in the clouds: (compare Psal. xviii. 9; 1. 3, 4; xcvii. 2, 3; civ. 3; Isa. xix. 1; xxvi. 21; Ixvi. 15.) But I think the celestial appearances described by Josephus (as above, note b, on Luke xxi. 11, p. 232) lead us into the exactest interpretation of this text, and greatly illustrate the propriety of these expressions here. 216 clxii. winds, from one end uttermost part of hea He delivers the parable of the fig-tree. SECT. them that the angels of God, and the great Lord of those heavenly hosts, are set as it were in arMat. ray against them. And, to pursue the allusion, 31 And [then] he XXIV. as at the great day the angels shall in a literal shall send his angels, with a great sound of 31 sense assemble all his saints together, so also he a trumpet, and they shall then send forth his messengers with the shall gather together great sound of his gospel, as of a loud trumpet, his elect from the four and they shall assemble his elect from the four of heaven to the other, winds, even from one end of the heavens to the [from the uttermost other, or from the utmost part of the earth one part of the earth, to the way to those climates which lie under the utter- ven. [MARK XIII. most part of heaven the other way; and multi- 27.] tudes of all nations shall obey the summons, though the Jews have ungratefully and foolishly despised it; and the Son of man shall be honoured and trusted by millions now unborn, when this wicked and perverse nation is perished in their rebellion and infidelity. And when Luke these things begin to come to pass, be not you XXI. 28. terrified and dismayed, but rather cheerfully look upwards, and lift up your heads with joy and assurance; for whatever happens, you will be secure; and as soon as you see the first appearance of these signs, you may comfortably conclude that your complete redemption and deliverance draws nigh; for many of you will be safely brought home to the haven of eternal peace before these storms are ended, and the rest of you will not long survive them. LUKE XXI. 28. And when these things be gin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. And, further to illustrate what he had been 29 And he spake saying, he spake to them a very easy and familiar to them a parable, [Now] behold [and parable, saying, Behold now, [and] learn a para- learn a parable of the e Send forth his messengers.] Most translations, as well as our own, greatly obscure this text, by rendering the word ay λus angels; for though it generally signify those celestial spirits who are on great occasions the messengers of God to our world, it is well known that the word refers not to their nature but to their office; and is often applied to men, and rendered messengers. See Mark i. 2; Luke vii. 24, 47; ix. 52; 2 Cor. viii. 23; Phil. ii. 25; and Jam. ii. 25. In some of which places it signifies, as here, preachers of the gospel, who were sent sorth to carry on God's great design of uniting all his chosen people in one society under Christ, as their common head. Eph. upwards: avanual.] This is sion which admirably suits the labour and sufferings under which postles would be depressed in this af ble fig flicted state. See Raphel. Annot, ex Herod. p. 270. g Your redemption draws nigh.] As the resurrection is the time when we shall in fact be fully redeemed, or delivered from all the sad consequences of sin, and therefore is called the redemption of our bodies, (Rom. viii. 23; compare Eph. iv. 30, and Hos. xiii. 14): so in a less proper sense the deliverance from all the toils and sorrows, temptations and infirmities, of this sinful and calamitous life, may, on the like principles, be called redemption. And if we may judge of the length of the apostles' lives by the extent of their labours, though we know not the time when many of them died, there is reason to conjecture it was not till about this period; which, by the way, would be an argument they were now most of them young men. The generation shall not pass till all were fulfilled. 32. MARK XIII. 28-] they now shoot forth selves, that summer is 247 clxii. fig-tree, and all the ble from the example of the fig-tree, and all the SECT. trees: [MAT. XXIV. other trees that drop their leaves in the winter: When buds appear upon the fig-tree, and its Luke 30 When [his branch branch is now become tender, and the sap rising XXI. 30. is yet tender, and] in the other trees, they shoot forth their young [leaves,] ye see and leaves, and begin to open and spread, you see know of your own- and know of your ownselves, by the observation now nigh at hand: you have often made, that summer is now near [MAT. XXIV.-32. at hand, as these are certain prognostications of MARK XIII.-28.] it: So likewise you, when you shall see all these 31 31 So likewise ye, things come to pass, may assuredly know that the when ye [shall see destruction of the Jewish state, and the adto pass, know ye that vancement of the kingdom of God in all its glory, the kingdom of God is just at hand, [even] at the doors; or that the at the doors.] [MAT. time is coming when the desolation I have been XXIV. 33. MARK Speaking of shall come upon Jerusalem, and the gospel shall be propagated all abroad, and take such root in the world, that you may assure yourselves it shall never be destroyed. [all] these things come is nigh at hand, [even XIII. 29. shall not pass away, 32 Verily I say un- And verily I say unto you, and urge you to ob- 32 to you, This generation serve it, as absolutely necessary in order to undertill all [these things] stand what I have been saying, That this generabe fulfilled. [MAT. tion of men now living shall not pass away until MARK all these things be fulfilled"; for what I have fore XXIV. 34. 33 Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass away. XXIV. 35. XIII. 31.] [MAT. told concerning the destruction of the Jewish state is so near at hand, that some of you shall live to see it all accomplished with a dreadful exactness: And the rest may die in the assur- 33 ance of it for another and yet more awful day shall come when, in a literal sense, heaven and MARK earth shall pass away, and the whole fabric of this visible world shall be dissolved before my majestic presence; but my words shall not pass away till they are perfectly fulfilled, and the efficacy of them shall remain in the eternal world which shall succeed these transitory scenes. MARK XIII. 32. But hour, But though Jerusalem shall be destroyed beof that day, and that fore the generation disappear, yet of that great decisive day which is appointed for the dissolution and the judgment of the world, and of the hour h This generation shall not pass away antil all these things be fulfilled.] Though Brennius, and Mede (in his Works, p. 752), have here the honour to be followed by so great an authority as Dr. Sykes (of Chris tianity, p. 60), yet I must beg leave to say that I cannot think the texts they collect sufficient to prove that by this generation [yeva auln] we are here to understand the Jewish nation through all ages; as if our Lord intended to say they should con- Mark XIII. 32 |