Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 594
“Assuredly I say unto you, there are some standing here who shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” Matthew 16:28.
I must confess that I have frequently read this verse with but a vague sense of its profound impressiveness and I have passed it over rapidly because I did not understand it clearly. Though well acquainted with the usual interpretations, none of them had ever satisfied my mind. It seemed to me as if the text had awakened surprise without suggesting a simple obvious meaning, and therefore the good commentators had invented explanations and offered suggestions widely different one from another, but all equally obscure and improbable. Lately, however, in reading a volume of sermons by Bishop Horseley, I have met with a view altogether new of the passage which I firmly believe to be the correct one.
Though I do not suppose I shall carry the judgment of all of you with me, yet I shall do my best to bring out of it that terrible denunciation which I believe the Savior has here left on record. With His own Cross and passion in view, He was admonishing His disciples to steadfastness, appealing to them at any sacrifice to take up their cross and follow Him. Then portraying the inestimable value of the soul and reflecting on the horror of the soul being lost—a doom, the full force of which would be impossible to comprehend until He should come in the Glory of His Father, with all His holy angels— He stopped short, looked upon some of the company and said in words like these, “There are certain persons standing here who shall never taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”
Now what did He mean by this? Obviously it is either a marvelous promise to some who were His disciples, indeed, or else it is a portent of woe to others who should die in their sins. How do the popular interpretations of our learned expositors look at it? Some say it refers to the Transfiguration and it certainly is remarkable that the account of the Transfiguration immediately follows this verse both in Mark and in Luke, as well as in this record of Matthew. But can you, for a moment, bring your minds to believe that Christ was describing His Transfiguration when He spoke of “the Son of Man coming in His kingdom”?
Can you see any connection between the Transfiguration and the preceding verse, which says, “For the Son of Man shall come in the Glory of His Father with His angels. And then He shall reward every man according to His works”? We grant you that Christ was in His Glory upon Mount Tabor, but He did not there “reward every man according to his works,” nor is it fair to call that a “coming” of the Son of Man at all! He did not “come” on Mount Tabor, for He was on the earth already. And it is a misuse of language to construe that into an advent. Besides, where would be the occasion for such a solemn prefix—“Assuredly I say unto you”?
Does it not raise expectation merely to cause disappointment if He intended no more than this—“There are some standing here who shall see Me transfigured”? That scene took place six days afterwards. The next verse tells you so, “And after six days Jesus takes Peter, James and John, his brother, and brings them up into an high mountain apart.” Why, the majesty of the prediction which carries our thoughts forward to “the last things” in the world’s history makes us shrink from accepting an immediate fulfillment of it all! I cannot imagine, therefore, that the Transfiguration is in the slightest degree referred to here—and I do not think that anyone would have thought of such a thing unless he had been perplexed and utterly nonplussed for an explanation.
And again—though it seems almost incredible—Dr. Gill endorses this view, and moreover says that it also refers to the descent of the Holy Spirit. At this I am staggered! How any man can find an analogy with Pentecost in the connection here I cannot understand! Pentecost took place six months after this event and why Jesus Christ should say, “Assuredly I say unto you there are some standing here who will live six months,” I really cannot comprehend! It seems to me that my Master did not waste people’s time by talking such platitudes. Who, that reads this passage, can think it has any reference to the descent of the Holy Spirit?—“For the Son of Man shall come in the Glory of His Father with His angels. And then shall He reward every man according to his works.”
Did Christ come at Pentecost in the Glory of His Father? Was there any company of angels at Pentecost? Did He then reward every man according to his works? Scarcely can the descent of the Holy Spirit, or the appearance of cloven tongues, like as of fire, be called the “coming of the Son of Man in the Glory of His Father with His angels, to give every man according to his works” without a gross misuse of our mother tongue, or a strange violation of symbolic imagery. Both these constructions, however, which I now mention, have now been given up as unsatisfactory by those modern students who have thought most carefully upon the subject.