Prophecies of the Mount: The Second Coming in Glory

“but of that day and houb knoweth no man, no, not the angels op heaven, but mt patheb only. but as the days op noe were, bo shall also the coming op the son op man be. for a3 in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the son op man be. then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. watch therefore; for you know not what houb your lord doth come. but know this, that ip the goodman op the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the son op man cometh. who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? blessed is that servant whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing, verily i say unto you, that he shall make him ruler over all his goods,” etc. etc. — matt. xxiv. 36-47.

“and take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares op this lipb, and so that day come upon you unawares. for as a snare shall it comb on all them that dwell on the pace op the whole earth. watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall comb to pass, and to stand before the son of man. and in the day time hb was teaching in the temple; and at night he went out, and abode in the mount that is called the mount op olives.” — ixi. 34-37; mark xin. 32-37.

We have found in the preceding chapter, that the previous part of this remarkable discourse of Jesus, (so specially interweaved with the memories of the Mount of Olives,) is occupied with a graphic description of His coming in judgment, at the destruction of Jerusalem. But the local and historical coming is typical and suggestive of one far mightier. The Divine Saviour passes from a solitary event in earth’s history, which concerned one generation alone, to the culminating glories of that Day, when “before Him shall be gathered all nations; “when” He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds; from one end of heaven to the other! ‘* The subject is one far too wide for the brief consideration our space can afford. We must restrict ourselves to the gleaning of a few of the more prominent truths bearing upon it, to be gathered from the Gospel of St Matthew, with any additional light imparted by the other synoptical narratives.

We are here informed, that the time of the Saviour’s advent is involved in secrecy. There have always been, and doubtless there will always be, soothsayers in the Church — would-be prophets, who will venture to map out God’s future, and to give day and date for the occurrence of unfulfilled predictions; — their successive failures only rebuking their presumption for diving into those “secret things which belong to the Lord our God,” “We know that there are not a few also, who, in no spirit of presumption, but in honest faith and holy hope, are living in the prospect of the Redeemer’s speedy coming — who have their finger even now confidently pointing to the roll of fast-completing prophecy — who have placed their ear to the earth, straining to catch the sound of the wheels of Messiah’s chariot. But the hour — the season of the Advent — is here pronounced, by lips from which there can be no appeal, to be beyond the ken of man. Even the angels — the heavenly” watchers “of Daniel — are involved in the same ignorance:” they cannot read the writing nor the interpretation thereof “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only,” (ver. 24.)

We have next, a preliminary sign of the advent: — one of the events which are to antecede and anticipate it The Great Master — the Omniscient Saviour — utters the following brief but significant parable, (ver. 32,) “Now learn a parable of the fig-tree; when his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.” These words seem, from their connexion in this passage, to refer to the Jewish nation. Several commentators suggest that they contain a natural reference to the fig-tree which our Lord cursed on the way to Bethany.* The latter, as we found, was a striking type of Israel,

Stier, Ebrard, &c.

by national grief and apostasy reduced to the condition of a fruitless, leafless cumberer. The naked skeleton, indeed, with stem and branches, has subsisted for eighteen hundred years: but its spiritual as well as its political glory is gone; the people dwelling, but dwelling isolated and alone, “not reckoned among the nations! “The Great Husbandman, after coming often and again seeking fruit and finding none, pronounced the dooming sentence; — “Immediately the fig-tree withered away.*’ But is that withering to be for ever?’ Is that curse final, irremediable? Is the blighted tree” twice dead, plucked up by the roots? “” Son of man,” are these stripped boughs and branches not yet *’ to live? ““Learn,” — says those very lips that gave utterance to the retributive sentence, — “learn a parable of that fig-tree.” * Ere I come again, — ere my feet shall stand once more on this Mount OF Olives, that withered skeleton shall effloresce in luxuriance and beauty: every decayed stem and twig shall break forth in verdant leaves, and cluster thick with luscious fruit’

In the state and condition of the Jewish people at the present day, we cannot read this parable yet. We can see no symptoms yet of the green leaf. We see the prophet’s bones in the valley. But “lo! they are very many, and very dry.” We gaze on that skeleton fig-tree: it still retains its place, — a marvellous, separate, and distinct existence, — but there are no spring or summer tints on the yet bare branches. Israel is yet ungathered, her blindness is still unremoved. We cannot look for the Lord’s coming, until we see these promised pioneers of His advent; — until we see the now dispersed and scattered children of Abraham, alike by their national return to the land of their fathers, and by their national recognition of Him whom their fathers crucified, “preparing the way of the Lord and making straight in the desert an highway for our God.” It is manifest from this, and from manifold other passages, that the Jews are to have an all-important part in the evolution of the great drama of the future. When we begin to see the revivifying of that wintry fig-tree; when we see these scattered thousands flying “as doves to their windows,” those who have for eighteen hundred years “lien among the pots,” now with “their wings covered with silver and their feathers with yellow gold,” — then, but not till then, shall we feel that we are on the eve of great events, when, either in Person or in power, the Lord shall come, and when the sign of the Son of man shall appear in the heavens.*

* ““With God,” indeed, “all things are possible.” And (speaking of the political restoration and settlement of the Jews in Palestine) among these possibilities, doubtless, is that of the Scripture words receiving a literal and miraculous fulfilment, “A nation shall be born in a day,” (Isa. lxvi. 8.) But we have no reason to suppose that there will be a departure, in this case, from the wonted gradual and progressive method of the Divine providential dealings, as seen in the analogy of nature, “First the blade, then the ear, then the full com in the ear.” The first condition of such a restoration seems, at this moment, awanting: no herald- voice has yet been heard amid these solitudes, proclaiming, even in the primary, literal sense of the words, — “Prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones, (Isa. lxii. 10.) I speak of this as illustrating the absence of the primary element of returning civilisation — that even “the ways of Zion do mourn,” (Lam. i. 4.) There are horse and camel tracks, but not one * road ’ throughout all Palestine, from Dan to Beersheba. The one only symbol of modern progress, is the establishment of telegraph communication between Jaffa and Jerusalem. Indeed, no one who has recently been in the Holy Land, who has traversed its dreary wastes, its stony, barren, blighted valleys, and noted, above all, its utter moral degradation, can fail being struck with the absence, at this hour, of any “sign” of a speedy, political, social, or spiritual regeneration.

, THE SECOND COMING IN GLOEY. 253

Yet, notwithstanding what we have now advanced, we cannot — we dare not — denude the words of Christ, of their significance and meaning, that that day of the Lord will come suddenly unexpectedly. We are to allow no interpretation of prophecy to rob ns of the solemn lesson these words convey. As Noah’s contemporaries laughed to scorn the superstitious fears and forebodings of the solitary “preacher of Righteousness; “— as they doubtless denounced him as a poor dreamer, a fanatic alarmist, when they saw him day by day plying his hammer in constructing the rude ark of safety from the impending flood: — So is it now, and so will it be, when the Lord comes. Men will not credit the solemn monition. We may, as the Lord’s ambassadors, proclaim the august reality; but they will point to the sequences of nature, — to the unvarying succession of the seasons — to the blue sky above, and the green fields below, — and say of the credulous preacher and his theme, as was said of the Old Testament prophet when he was counted nothing better than a raving enthusiast,” Ah, Lord God! doth he not speak parables? “Come when the advent hour may, it will come at unawares. When the world is absorbed as ever in its business, its pleasures, its gains, its traflSc, its money-making. When life is going on in its wonted unvarying round. When, with some, the feast is spread — and the lights of luxury and gaiety are burning: when, with others, it is the dinx lamp of sickness, or the hushed chamber of death. When, with some, the marriage-bell will be ringing; — with others, the funeral bell will be tolling. When all classes — ay, even many of God’s own people are lulled in a blind security. When farmer and merchant, and lawyer and trader are saying —” Peace and safety: “sudden destruction will” come.’’ In the parallel passage in St Luke, that day is said to come “as a snara’* It is the homely figure of an animal, prowling in the woods in search of prey, in a moment entrapped in the concealed and unexpected snare. Or in ver. 43, it is said to overtake” as a thief: “like a lurking assassin entering the dwelling at such a time as the goodman of the house was off his guard; when he had retired to rest, — when he has barred his windows, bolted his door, seen his children hushed in slumber, and the curtain of silence drawn around his dwelling; — then (when all is apparently secure) the prowling midnight thief steals stealthily within — “So shall also the coming of the Son of Man be,” Or, “as the lightning lightneth from one part of heaven to another ;** — as in these Eastern countries, the azure blue of the sky is often, in a few moments, overcast with black clouds, and the voUeyed-lightning leaps from one end of the firmament to the other, bursting over the head of the unsheltered traveller — “So shall also the coming of the Son of Man be,” Oh, what a motive is this combined certainty and suddenness of our Lord’s advent, for habitual watching! What a quickening, stimulating incentive, for being ever ready; that that day may not overtake i as a thief!

Another truth here brought before us is, that the day of the Saviour’s second coming will be a day of complete and final separations. Ver. 40, “Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.” The godly are, to the last, to be associated in life’s duties and avocations with the ungodly, — the children of light with the children of darkness; they meet in the same street; they transact business in the same mart and exchange; they sit together in the same office; they stand together behind the same counter: Even in the same family are those forced to commingle, who are in heart and spirit dissimilar and uncongenial. But, on that Day, these conventional fellowships of earth will be suddenly arrested and severed. Those who have worked together, and gained together, and lived together, and wept together, shall have then the brand put upon them of eternal separation. Their partnership shall for ever end: “the one shall be taken and the other left.” The now commingling tares and wheat will be discriminated, and bound up in separate bundles. Yes; in bundles. Like will draw to like. There will be happy assimilations in the family of the righteous; there will be fearful assimilations in the family of tUe unrighteous. Now, mankind (the righteous and the wicked — the pure ore and the dross) are mingled in one promiscuous heap. But the moral magnet of holiness will then attract together the holy; while, with a negative power, it will repel the unholy: — He that is unjust will be unjust still; and he that is righteous will be righteous stilL Oh, most solemn and searching thought — for those who have associated together for a lifetime on earth, then to bid each other a final and everlasting farewell! It is sad enough to have blanks in the family circle here. God keep us from having these blanks perpetuated and sterotyped through eternity I

Let OS learn as another lesson, That the prospect of Christ’s coming, need not interfere with the prosecution of the ordinary duties and engagements of life, God’s elect — His waiting people — are represented to ns, in this parable-picture, as busied in the commonest worldly avocations; some, engaged working in the field, others, grinding at the mill We find from St PauVs Epistle to the Thessalonians, that many members of that Church, even in this early era, were in a state of feverish excitement, under the impression that the second advent was imminent. They lost interest in all worldly matters. They abandoned life’s duties, — surrendered themselves to an existence of idle contemplation: they lived in a religious dream-land, and unfitted themselves for the discharge of their ordinary occupations. Paul rebuked them for being thus nnnecessarily “shaken in mind and troubled, as though the day of Christ were at hand,” and declared, that if any would not work neither should he eat. Religion need not, and ought not, to interfere with diligence in business. When our Lord comes, we need be no better employed than in the prosecution of life’s lawful labours. The Christian existence is not one of dreamy and sentimental isolation, implying a divorce from the activities of the world. The great and diflScult problem is, to be in the world and yet not of it. To be, when that advent hour shall arrive, working in the field, or grinding at the mill; and yet, even in the midst of these coarse and common duties to have the advent spirit — the spirit of preparedness to lay down spade, or sieve, or ploughshare; housework, or fieldwork; or, it may be, pen and ledger; and to say — “I am ready! Even so, come Lord Jesus, come quickly!”

Finally, Let us advert to our Lord’s own direct practical question, ver. 45 — “Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made rider over his household?” He asks Who? “who is this?” that each, one of us, when we gaze upon the picture which he draws of the faithful and wise servant, may put the home question — ‘Does this answer my case?* “Lord, is it I?” *

In the parallel passage in St Mark, “The Son of man “is represented as one taking a far journey, who left his house and” gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work.” Would that we could realise and act upon this great fact — that to” every man there is given a *’ work’* That it is not to ministers in their official capacity — but to each member of the Christian priesthood, — to each member of the Christian body-politic, Christ has assigned some business, som£ duty, some work in His kingdom. It is to be feared, that in these our times, Religion is made very much a matter of Sundays and of churches — culpably wrenched from the duties of daily lifa A man thinks he has done well if he goes once a week to the house of God, and has his children baptized, and partakes, it may be, of the holy communion. But if asked what work he has done for Christ, — what cup of water he ever carried to the sufferer in Christ’s name, — what word he ever spoke in rebuking evil and in defending righteousness, — what real genuine or downright interest he is taking in Christ’s cause at home

* See Stier, in loco.

B and abroad: — in one word, what niche he is filling in the spiritual temple? — he would either affect to misunderstand you, or he would have the honesty to say boldly out. — ‘I am to be responsible for no such work. Anything of the kind, I shall do by proxy, but not by personal effort. My religion is the religion which begins the week and no more. I do not pretend, and never will, to take it with me through the week. Religion is religion, and business is business, let each of them retain their own place.’

That is not what Jesus means by giving “to every man his work.” We know what this is in worldly things. We know what that wondrous secret in our country’s mechanical and industrial prosperity is, the division of labour. Even in the same manufactory, you have men set apart for special departments of handicraft; and the one would make a sorry business of his neighbour’s. The carpenter would blunder at the anvil; and the blacksmith would make clumsy work with the plane. Still more so is this the case in the varied educated professions. How strangely would the merchant act the physician’s part at the sick-bed. How out of place the lawyer would feel in the engineer’s factory, amid bolts and rivets, wheels and pistons. How ill at ease would the man of letters be, in plying the hammer of the son of toil; or the brawny arm of the artizan in preparing sheets to feed the printing-press. The beautiful arrangement, with regard to all these, is that stated by Divine lips — that there is “to every man his work” And it is the same in the Church of Christ. We, who are the professing members of that Church — who have, by His own appointed sacramental rite, solemnly bound ourselves over to His service, we have a work to do for Him: — not only a creed to believe — doctrines to subscribe — a denominational sect to uphold — but a work to do.” — something that will redound to His glory, benefit our fellow-men, promote His cause and hasten His kingdom; something that will prove our love to Himself, not by words but by deeds — a living faith demonstrated by works, in our families, in our neighbourhoods; by kindness to the poor; by sympathy with the afflicted; helping a needy charity — aiding a crippled missionary cause; glad, when doors of usefulness are plainly opened, to be ready with the approving smile and the open hand. Oh, anything better than “the men of Mero!” — the “donothings “— the men who ignore all work, and all personal responsibility; — the pages of whose history, so far as God and heaven are concerned, are one mournful blank: trees in the vineyard, but only cumberers, — darkening, with their unproductive boughs, the ground which other fruit-bearers would have occupied, screening from others the glory of the sunlight. It is no apology, but a sad aggravation, that they know their duty, — that” they know their Master’s will and do it not.” If ye know these things, happy only are ye if ye “D0 them.”

Ponder the solemn closing sentences in this chapter of St Matthew; peruse them without note or comment. Ver. 48 — ^’’But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth bis coming; and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and iii an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hjrpocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’* These are searching words. Let none put them aside, saying — * They concern not me! I am at least a professing Christian! ‘So also was this evil, forgetful, neglectfcd steward of his lord’s goods. He is called “a servant,^ — “that evil servant’* Outwardly he is a servant of Christ. He calls Christ ‘* My Lord” — *’ My Lord delayeth his coming.’’ He does not even doubt or deny the coming of his Lord, as the scoffers do. He only says, that coining is delayed. But, alas! he guiltily presumes on that delay. His presumption makes him careless and godless. He soon comes to assimilate with the world’s maxims, and to be conformed to its guilty practices. And see his end! He has his portion with the hypocrites, where “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” What a solemn call to write ‘Beware ’ on the “evil heart of unbelief.” For observe (ver. 48,) that evil servant began saying in his heart.** The heart began to entertain presumptuous, careless, and ‘unfaithful’ thoughts; and see how rapidly these germinated into sadder deeds. It was a downward course, as all sin is. The servant — the man who called Christ ‘Lord’ — ends in degraded worldliness — in the indulgence of base, earthly passion. He smites his fellow-servants; he eats and drinks with the drunken; those who are carnally secure — steeped in forgetfulness and indifference and sloth.

Nor are the very best of Christ’s people beyond the need and necessity of such warnings and expostulations. The adorable Redeemer, while uttering these words to ALL indiscriminately and for the benefit of every age, had, as His immediate auditors now surroimding Him on the Mount of Olives, His own disciples. These He had specially in His eye, when He said, in the parallel passage of. St Luke, — “Take heed to youbselves, 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.” Truly, *’ let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fair

In St Mark, there are three monosyllables brought into significant juxtaposition. They may well form the three significant watchwords of the Christian life — “Watch,” “Peay,’’ “Work.” The combination of watchfulness and working with prayer, is the composite of the true life of faith, “Pray always,” it is said in the parallel chapter of Luke; — that is, be ever in the spirit of prayer, and you will be in the spirit of readiness for your Lord’s coming. Live like watchmen too. Get up often on the watchtower, looking wistfully along the highway, to see if you can catch your Master’s projected shadow. Oh what a preservative against temptation and ’ the snares of the world,’ to live habitually under the thought — “My Lord may come to-morrow!”

And whatever be our thoughts about His second advent, all we have said is, at all events, true with reference to death. By sudden and unlooked-for bereavements — the midnight summons to the eternal world, given sometimes in the twinkling of an eye, and without a note of warning — He is ever and anon sounding in our ears the solemn monition — “At such a time as ye think not.” Would that we might habitually live, as if our Lord could thus come at any time — this year — next week — to-day! Acting like faithful servants, who know their Master is on a journey

—expecting Him back, they know not how soon: He may tarry for years, or they may be roused from sleep by His coming at that midnight hour: yet having the house ever swept and garnished, ready for His welcome — “Blessed,” thrice blessed, “is that servant, whom his Lord, when he Cometh, shall find so doing.” Above all, seek, as members of separate families on earth — as those who love earth’s consecrated ties, — to be so living, that these may be but a foreshadow and prefiguring of deathless friendships in a land where separation is unknown: that when Christ comes, or when death, His messenger, comes, it may not prove the dark precursor of eternal severance — the workers at the field and at the mill finally separated — the joyous glances at the hearths and homes of human love to be exchanged no more for ever; but rather, the blessed and welcome signal for everlasting reunion with those who are waiting to welcome you —

Saints in glory perfect made,
Wait thy passage through the shade;

Ardent for thy coming o’er.
Bee they throng the blissful shore 1