From all these passages, and from the whole drift of the New Testament, it is plain, (1.) That the Apostles fully believed that there is to be a second coming of Christ. (2.) That his coming is to be in person, visible and glorious. (3.) That they kept this great event constantly before their own minds, and urged it on the attention of the people, as a motive to patience, constancy, joy, and holy living. (4.) That the Apostles believed that the second advent of Christ would be attended by the general resurrection, the final judgment, and the end of the world.

As already intimated, it is objected to this view of the prophe cies of the New Testament referring to the Second Advent, —

1. That the first advent of Christ is predicted in the Old Testament in nearly as glowing terms as his second coming is set forth in the New Testament. He was to come in the clouds of heaven; with great pomp and power; all nations were to be subject to Him; all people were to be gathered before Him; the stars were to fall from heaven; the sun was to be darkened, and the moon to be turned into blood. These descriptions were not realized by the event; and are understood to refer to the great changes in the state of the world to be effected by his coming. It is unreasonable, therefore, as it is agreed, to expect anything like a literal fulfilment of these New Testament prophecies. To this it may be answered, (1.) That in the Old Testament the Messianic period is described as a whole. The fact that the Messiah was to come and establish an everlasting kingdom which was to triumph over all opposition, and experience a glorious consummation, is clearly foretold. All these events were, so to speak, included in the same picture; but the perspective was not preserved. The prophecies were not intended to give the chronological order of the events foretold. Hence the consummation of the Messiah’s kingdom is depicted as in immediate proximity with his appearance in the flesh. This led almost all the Jews, and even the disciples of Christ themselves, before the day of Pentecost, to look for the immediate establishment of the Messiah’s kingdom in its glory. Such being the character of the Old Testament prophecies, it cannot be fairly inferred that they have as yet received their full accomplishment; or that they are now being fulfilled in the silent progress of the Gospel. They include the past and the present, but much remains to be accomplished in the future more in accordance with their literal meaning. (2.) The character of the predictions in the New Testament does not admit of their being made to refer to any spiritual coming of Christ or to the constant progress of his Church. They evidently refer to a single event; to an event in the future, not now in progress; an event which shall attract the attention of all nations, and be attended by the resurrection of the dead, the complete salvation of the righteous, and the condemnation of the wicked. (3.) A third answer to the objection under consideration is, that the Apostles, as is conceded, understood the predictions of Christ concerning his second coming, in the way in which they have been understood by the Church, as a whole, from that day to this.

2. A second objection to the common Church view of the eschatology of the New Testament is, that our Lord expressly says that the events which He foretold were to come to pass during that generation. His words are, “Verily, I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” This objection is founded upon the pregnant discourse of Christ recorded in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew. It is to be remarked that those chapters contain the answer which Christ gave to three questions addressed to Him by his disciples; first, when the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem was to occur second, what was to be the sign of his coming; and third, when the end of the world was to take place. The difficulty in interpreting this discourse is, to determine its relation to these several questions. There are three methods of interpretation which have been applied to this passage. The first assumes that the whole of our Lord’s discourse refers but to one question, namely, When was Jerusalem to be destroyed and Christ’s kingdom to be inaugurated; the second adopts the theory of what used to be called the double sense of prophecy; that is, that the same words or prediction refer to one event in one sense, and to a different event in a higher sense; the third assumes that one part of our Lord’s predictions refers exclusively to one of the questions asked, and that other portions refer exclusively to the other questions.

The rationalistic interpreters adopt the first method and refer everything to the overthrow of the Jewish polity, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the inauguration of the Church which is to do its work of judgment in the earth. Some evangelical interpreters also assume that our Lord answers the three questions put to Him as one, as they constituted in fact but one in the minds of his disciples, since they believed that the three events, the destruction of Jerusalem, the second coming of Christ, and the end of the world, were all to occur together. Thus Luthardt says: “There are three questions according to the words; but only one in the minds of the disciples, as they did not consider the three events, the destruction of Jerusalem, the second coming of Christ, and the end of the world, as separated chronologically; but as three great acts in the final drama of the world’s history.”² In this sense our Lord, he adds, answered their inquiries. He does not separate the different subjects, so as to speak first of one and then of another; but he keeps all ever in view. “It is the method,” he says, “of Biblical prophecy, which our Lord observes, always to predict the one great end and all else and what is preparatory, only so far as it stands in connection with that end and appears as one of its elements.”³ Although, therefore, the prophecy of Christ extends to events in the distant future, He could say that that generation should not pass away until all was fulfilled; for the destruction of Jerusalem was the commencement of that work of judgment which Christ foretold.

According to this view, the first method of interpretation differs very little from the second of those above mentioned. Both suppose that the same words or descriptions are intended to refer to two or more events very different in their nature and in the time of their occurrence. Isaiah’s prediction of the great deliverance which God was to effect for his people, was so framed as to answer both to the redemption of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, and to the greater redemption by the Messiah. It was in fact and equally a prediction of both events. The former was the type, and the first step toward the accomplishment of the other. So also in the fourteenth chapter of Zechariah, the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, the spiritual redemption, and the final judgment, are blended together. As, therefore, in the Old Testament the Messianic prophecies took in the whole scope of God’s dealings with his people, including their deliverance from Babylon and their redemption by Christ, so as to make it doubtful what refers to the former and what to the latter event; so this discourse of Christ may be considered as taking in the whole history of his kingdom, including his great work of judgment in casting out the Jews and calling the Gentiles, as well as the final consummation of his work. Thus everything predicted of the final judgment had its counterpart in what was fulfilled in that generation.

The third method of interpretation is greatly to be preferred, if it can be successfully carried out. Christ does in fact answer the three questions presented by his disciples. He told when the temple and the city were to be destroyed; it was when they should see Jerusalem compassed about with armies. He told them that the sign of the coming of the Son of Man was to be great defection in the Church, dreadful persecutions, and all but irresistible temptations, and that with his coming were to be connected the final judgment and the end of the world; but that the time when those events were to occur, was not given unto them to know, nor even to the angels of heaven. (Matt. xxiv. 36.)

If this be the method of interpreting these important predictions, then the declaration contained in Matt. xxiv. 34, “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled,” must be restricted to the “all things spoken of, referring to the destruction of Jerusalem and the inauguration of the Church as Christ’s kingdom on earth. There is, however, high authority for making ἡ γενεὰ αὗτη, here and in the parallel passages, Mark xiii. 30 and Luke xxi. 32, refer to Israel as a people or race; in this case the meaning would be that the Jews would not cease to be a distinct people until his predictions were fulfilled.⁴ There is nothing, therefore, in this discourse of Christ’s inconsistent with the common Church doctrine as to the nature and concomitants of his Second Advent.

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Footnotes

1. Alger’s Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life. Philadelphia, 1864, p. 319. ↩

2. *Die Lehre von den letzen Dingen in Abhandlungen und Schriftauslegungen dargestellt,*von Chr. Ernst Luthardt, der Theologie Doktor und Professor zu Leipzig. Leipzig, 1861, p. 87. ↩

3. Ibid. pp. 87, 88. ↩

4. Dorner. De Oratione Christi Eschatologica, Tractatus Theologicus. Stuttgart, 1844, pp. 76-86. C. A. Auberlen, The Prophecies of Daniel and the Revelations of St. John. Translated by Rev. Adolph Saphir, Edinburgh, 1856, p. 354. “The Lord Jesus himself,” says Auberlen, “prophesied (Matthew xxiv. 34), that Israel was to be preserved during the entire Church-historical period.” ↩