They were talking to Satan, the chief of the devils, about their plans to tempt and ruin men. God is but performing the thing that is appointed for us, and our inordinate trouble is an interpretative quarrel with that appointment. Some think, the seducers here pointed to were such as had been settled teachers in the church, and had gained reputation as such, but afterward betrayed the truth they had taught, and revolted to error; and from such the danger is the greater, because least suspected. Among men all restraints of order will be dissolved, sin and ungodliness rule upon earth. Chapter Contents Christ foretells the destruction of the temple. In Luke there is peculiar distinctness in noticing the Gentiles, and their times of supremacy during the long period of Israel's degradation. Nothing can account for such phenomena but design; and the more so as there is no ground to assume that each succeeding evangelist was kept in ignorance of his predecessor's account of our Lord. We enter upon a new series in the rest of this chapter and the next. At that time there will be two men in the field; one is taken, and the other is left. However, I may not dwell upon minuter points, which would, of course, frustrate the desire to give a comprehensive sketch in a short compass. But eternal damnation accrues to those who refuse the gospel of the kingdom." For false Messiahs and false prophets will arise, and they will produce great signs and wonders, the consequence of which will be, if possible, to lead astray the elect. These all constitute signs of His return, world wars. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom [in the Greek, this speaks of world wars and this is a sign]: there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places ( Matthew 24:7 ). Thus our Lord gives evidence that the power was in Himself already, so that they need not lack because the kingdom was not yet come, in the full, manifest sense of the word. Was it without moral import? As Chrysippus had it: "Then again the world is restored anew in a precisely similar arrangement as before. The message is, as ever, despised. When we consider that saying, three possibilities emerge. What a contrast, too, with Jesus afterwards, when the trial came! These were the three judgments which David was to choose one out of; and he was in a great strait, for he knew not which was the worst: but what dreadful desolations will they make, when they all pour in together upon a people! The greatest ground of hatred in the days of the early Church was the fact that Christianity split homes and families, when one member decided for Christ and the others did not. how best to get rid of the difficulty? This trumpet is spoken of, 1 Corinthians 15:52, and 1 Thessalonians 4:16. (iii) They tell us that both judgment and a new creation are certain. "Go," said Satan, "and you will ruin them by the thousand." How God brought it all to pass is another question, which, of course, it is not for us to answer. (Matthew 21:28-32.) We must never forget that not only men but nations need the wisdom of Christ. Indeed, it was involved in the words said before "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." 13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. 15 When ye therefore shall see the . Not resting on Christ for their souls by faith, they have not the Spirit, and seek the inestimable gift among those who sell it, asking who will show them any good of whom they may buy this priceless oil. They were remarking really on the stones, one of the gospels tells us. A prediction of the event of the day; You will now shortly hear of wars, and rumours of wars. (2.) and then shall the end come: It is important to recognize "the end" of this verse as the "end of the Jewish economy" with the Temple and its sacrificial system. It was Judas at bottom; but there was also that in the rest which made them susceptible of similar selfishness at the expense of Jesus, although there was not in them the same allowance of diabolical influence which had suggested thoughts to Judas. For the modern reader, phrases such as "all the world" and "all nations" have a ring of absolute universality (Fowler 434). For him who most of all presumed on the strength of his love, it was enough to prove how little he yet knew of the reality of death, spite of his too ready boasts. Note, First, The angels shall be attendants upon Christ at his second coming; they are called his angels, which proves him to be God, and Lord of the angels; they shall be obliged to wait upon him. The Lord meanwhile comes, they that were ready go in with Him to the wedding, and the door was shut; the rest of the virgins are excluded. The Bible says that Satan will be bound during this period of time. (3.) Whenever the branch has become tender, and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. When you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, (whoso reads, let him understand:) Then let him which be in Judaea flee to the mountains: let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. And if we be frightened at a little brook in our way, what shall we do in the swellings of Jordan?Jeremiah 12:5. Accordingly we have, first, servants sent, and then more, not only in vain, but with insult and increase of wrong. 1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. It is most eminently a Jewish character and circumstance of persecution; as the aim was the retributive one, "that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. This is the foundation of the saints' eternal happiness, that they are God's elect. Now, again two divergent interpretations. But if that bad servant says to himself, 'My master will not be back for a long time yet,' and if he begins to beat his fellow-servants, and if he eats and drinks with drunkards, then the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not expecting him, and at an hour which he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the hypocrites. "They all slumbered and slept." But Christ had no other design than to restrain the apostles, who were disposed to fly with excessive eagerness to the possession of the heavenly glory, and to show them the necessity of patience; as if he had said, that redemption was not so close at hand as they had imagined it to be, but that they must pass through long windings. Josephus tells a dreadful story of a woman who in those days actually killed and roasted and ate her suckling child (Josephus, Wars of the Jews, 6. The beautiful end of Matthew is, that (while chief priests and elders essay to cover their wickedness by falsehood and bribery, and their lie "is commonly reported among the Jews until this day,") our Lord meets His disciples on a mountain in Galilee, according to His appointment, and sends them to disciple all the Gentiles. The notion of some men, especially a few men of learning, that the difference is due to ignorance on the part of one or other or all the evangelists, is of all explanations the worst, and even the least reasonable (to take the lowest ground); it is in plain truth the proof of their own ignorance, and the effect of positive unbelief. This is a notable feature, and not here alone, but elsewhere also. Beside war (and that is enough), there shall be. What could be conceived more solemn to Israel? The Roman troops came, the Jews were dispersed. These are the two subjects of the parables following. It is, therefore, clear that speculation regarding the time of the Second Coming is nothing less than blasphemy, for the man who so speculates is seeking to wrest from God secrets which belong to God alone. The religious rulers come before the Lord to put the first question that ever enters the minds of such men, "By what authority doest thou these things?" Matthew 24:19 Commentary. Then it seems to go on to say that the Second Coming will happen within the lifetime of the generation listening to Jesus at that moment. The whole truth of His position lies here. The sun appears by night, the moon by day. From this table our Lord goes to Gethsemane, and His agony there. They shall deceive, if it were possible, the very elect,Matthew 24:24; Matthew 24:24. However this may be, these words of the Lord close that part of the subject. The Lord does not cite the clearest Scripture about the resurrection; He does what in the circumstances is much better; He appeals to what they themselves professed most of all to revere. They have all been thrown down.Now He left then the temple area and He went over to the Mount of Olives, and. The phrase itself comes from Daniel 12:11. They demand whether it be lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not. 3. (vv. Note, At the second coming of Jesus Christ, there will be a general meeting of all the saints. Clearly the action is significant in both. So the prophecy to Daniel concerning the nation of Israel, and the city of Jerusalem, is that there are seventy sevens that have been determined upon the nation of Israel. It is remarkable that in our gospel this was permitted. Marriage has nothing to do with the risen state: there they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. . 4-14.) In Matthew it is very much more in a dispensational aspect; and hence the dealings with the Jews, both in mercy and judgment, are first given as a whole, according to that manner of his which furnishes a complete sketch at one stroke, so to speak. Some of them at least would be like country folk come up to London for a visit, staggered by what they saw; and well they might be, for there was nothing quite like the Temple in the ancient world. This bespeaks, First, The strength of the delusion; it is such as many shall be carried away by (so strong shall the stream be), even those that were thought to stand fast. on StudyLight.org StudyLght.org. The disciples had asked him Matthew 24:3 what should be the sign of his coming, and "of the end of the world.". We should not know from the first evangelist of any interval in either case; nor could we learn from either the first or the third but that the cleansing of the temple occurred on His earlier visit. The death of Jesus would be no demonstration of this sort. Jesus answered, "Be on the look-out 5. lest anyone lead you astray, for many will come in my name saying, 'I am God's Anointed One,' and they will lead many 6. astray. Such were the terrible pictures of the day of the Lord.. Matthew 7:7-11 link prayer and faithful living. They were not to believe rumours they might hear from time to time that the Messiah had returned, for there would always be false prophets who tried to attract a following for themselves. At the same time, the other apostles were not idle; and there is full proof that within thirty years after this prophecy was spoken, churches were established in all these regions. "Now one thing that they always disregard is that the Bible speaks of that trump by which the church will be caught up to glory, as the trump of God always shall sound; whereas, they confuse that with the seventh trumpet of the book of Revelation, because the trump of God is called the last trump. No critic of weight considers that these words have any just claim to be in the text that is founded on ancient authority. And so they threw down the temple stone by stone, to get the gold, until finally not one stone was left standing upon the other.Today in Jerusalem near the Western Wall just east of the entrance into the temple mount by which you go up to Al-Aqsa mosque, as you look down on the right hand side to the old Roman road, which is down at the bottom of the valley there that has now been excavated, you can see some stones lying just as they fell, just as they were pushed by the Roman soldiers in 70 A.D. when they sacked Jerusalem. Warns them against seduction by false prophets, Matthew 24:23-26. And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. Matthew 14 Bible Commentary - Matthew Henry (concise) Now this falls in with Matthew's design, rather than Luke's, with whom we shall find habitually it is a question of moral features, which the Lord may give opportunity of exhibiting at another time. I admit that in the resurrection of Christ God is for us, for the believer. A prescription of the duty of the day; See that ye be not troubled. Let him who is on the housetop not come down to 18. remove his goods from his house; and let him who is in the field 19. not come back to remove his cloak. And they'll throw you off with this one immediately. Note, Neither miracles nor multitudes are certain signs of a true church; for all the world wonders after the beast,Revelation 13:3. . Then when public troubles are great and threatening, and people will be catching at any thing that looks like deliverance, then Satan will take the advantage of imposing on them; they will say, Lo, here is a Christ, or there is one; but do not mind them: the true Christ did not strive, nor cry; nor was it said of him, Lo, here! Next, as little ground is there in Scripture to predicate of these latter-day sufferers the possession of the Holy Ghost, which is the peculiar privilege of the believer since the rejected Christ took His place as Head in heaven. It is striking to see this parable introduced here. The same phenomenon will also occur before the second event, the end of the world. Antiochus Epiphanes, the king of Syria, determined to stamp out Judaism and to introduce into Judaea Greek religion and Greek practices. Because John had said to him, "It is not lawful for you to have her": Having told us of the death of John the Baptist, Matthew will now explain to us how he died. From first to last, as we have seen, it was Jehovah-Messiah. Matthew 24:14 Commentary. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? This claim has been made by many leaders of cultic groups.David Berg leading "the children of God", Sunyut Moon leading the Monies, and so many laying claim to being the Messiah. Jesus said, "Don't let any men deceive you. May we gather real profit from all He has given us. The popish religion doth, in effect, set up a false Christ; the Pope comes, in Christ's name, as his vicar, but invades and usurps all his offices, and so is a rival with him, and, as such, an enemy to him, a deceiver, and an antichrist. But their practice was to be a beacon, not a guide. You will hear of wars and reports of wars. Because we are bid to expect this: the Jews must be punished, ruin must be brought upon them; by this the justice of God and the honour of the Redeemer must be asserted; and therefore all those things must come to pass; the word is gone out of God's mouth, and it shall be accomplished in its season. "When the king heard thereof, he was wroth, and sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers, and burnt up their city." Not Yet a Member? Very naturally the New Testament writers to a very great extent identified the Second Coming of Jesus and the Day of the Lord; and they took over all the imagery which had to do with the Day of the Lord and applied them to the Second Coming. God would have the iniquity of the Jews published every where, before the heavy stroke of his judgments should fall upon them; that all mankind, as it were, might be brought as witnesses against their cruelty and obstinacy in crucifying and rejecting the Lord Jesus. And where God invites, in Revelation chapter seventeen, the birds of the air to come feast upon the kings, and the chief captains, and men and so forth. From the time that the Jews rejected Christ, and he left their house desolate, the sword did never depart from their house, the sword of the Lord was never quiet, because he had given it a charge against a hypocritical nation and the people of his wrath, and by it brought ruin upon them. She too anointed the feet of Jesus with an alabaster box of ointment; but she stood at His feet behind, weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His feet. Matthew was written to Jews about 50 AD. Those that are most inquisitive concerning the secret things which belong not to them are most easily imposed upon by seducers, 2 Thessalonians 2:3. This is a point of importance for completing the view of His rejection, or its consequences in resurrection, and so Matthew takes particular care of it, though the same fact may be recorded also by Mark for his purpose. The raising up Him whom man slew renders this unquestionable. And this was just the point before the Lord: the little ones were thus in the truth and spirit of that oracle. And those that are left are the fortunate ones. Neither the individual Christian nor the Christian Church can ever know anything of a cowardly concealment or a cowardly silence. After no long interval, the disciples saw Jerusalem not only taken, but completely torn as it were from the roots. When, therefore, God sent the gospel to all other people, it was proof, or a witness unto them, that the special Jewish economy was at an end. In short, the original position is deserted. [4.] They feared "that deceiver," and so had their watch, and stone, and seal in vain! In this way, as I believe, we may and should account for the difference between Matthew and Mark in this particular, without in the smallest degree casting the shadow of an imperfection upon one any more than on the other; while the fact, already pressed, that eye-witnessing, while employed as a servant, is never allowed to govern in the composition of the gospels, bespeaks loudly that men forget their true Author in searching into the writers He employed, and that the only key to all difficulties is the simple but weighty truth that it was God communicating His mind about Jesus, as by Matthew so by Mark. Alas for those who in those days are carrying children in the womb, and who are suckling children. But we do not read that they ever sought the shelter of the Paschal Lamb's blood. The interesting thing is that it is the regular word for the arrival of a governor into his province or for the coming of a king to his subjects. It is not a question of any general issue that would apply to a course of ages, as to the present preaching of God's grace, or to the ordinary current of men's lives. If that is so, there could be a repeat of conditions such as those during the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, but on a wider scale and with greater intensity. Jesus said watch, be ye ready. But what a difference! Between the lower city and the Temple mount lay the valley of the Tyropoeon, and across this valley stretched a colossal bridge. He went through it in spirit before He went through it in fact. If they owned John, they must bow to the authority of Jesus; if they rejected John, they feared the people. All of the tribes of the earth. They did not; they crammed themselves into the city and into the walls of Jerusalem from all over the country, and that very folly multiplied the grim horror of the famine of the siege a hundredfold. They'll be shouting out Hosanna! Nor were they to think that all wars, famines, earthquakes or plagues were sure signs that the end was near (Matthew 24:4-8; Luke 21:8-11). These are Matthew 24:3, Matthew 24:14 and Matthew 24:27-28. His scope excluded such details, and, I am persuaded, rightly so, according to the mind of God's Spirit. The Church and the individual Christian must at all times constitute the conscience of Christianity--and it is characteristic of men that there are many times when they would wish to silence conscience. Secondly, These attendants shall be employed by him as officers of the court in the judgment of that day; they are now ministering spirits sent forth by him (Hebrews 1:14), and will be so then. However, in the Tribulation the message will stress the coming kingdom, and those who then turn to the Savior for salvation will be allowed entrance into the kingdom." 24 Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. This generation shall not pass, until all these things be fulfilled ( Matthew 24:34 ). The Romans came, as the executioners of the sentence of God (according to the just forebodings of the unjust high priest Caiaphas, who prophesied not without the Holy Ghost), and took away their place and nation, not because they did not, but because they did, kill Jesus their Messiah. And, if that is so, there are certain basic sins. The piece of money they produced proved their subjection to the Gentiles. Now concerning these deceivers, observe here. The one is here on the earth the humiliation, to wit, of the Messiah. 13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. It will be best if, first of all, we set down these verses as a whole; if, next, we set down the various aspects of the future with which they deal; and if, last, we try to assign each section to its place in the pattern. It is not an external or national stroke, though that too we have here a providential event in connection with Israel. The most dangerous day in a man's life is when he learns that there is such a word as tomorrow. Now there will be the false Christ, the Antichrist, and he will have the false Prophet, who will come to cause the world to worship him. THE VISION OF THINGS TO COME ( Matthew 24:1-31 ). To Mary Magdalene, who in her desire to pay her wonted obeisance probably was attempting something similar, He altogether declines it; but this is mentioned in the gospel of John. The end would not come till the gospel had spread throughout the world, and this goal would be reached only after much opposition. He had come seeking fruit; but there was none; and the Lord pronounced this curse, "Henceforth let no fruit grow on thee for ever." "See ye not all these things? 12 "Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold. Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple. no man knows, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only ( Matthew 24:36 ). For they bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. This interpretation derives support, then, if that be needed, from the parable that immediately follows (verses 32, 33). Such an issue will be seen to be implied, if we compare our Lord's curse with the rest of the word of God, which points to better things yet in store for Israel. God left nothing undone on any side, but so ordered that the heart of this Israelite should yield a testimony that grace was at work, spite of the lamentable chill that stupefied the people. Blood trickles from wood, the stone gives forth a voice, and salt is found in fresh water. The message preached today in the Church Age and the message proclaimed in the Tribulation period calls for turning to the Savior for salvation. (2.) But He was not content with merely thus touching conscience in a way that was painful enough to the flesh; for they found that, spite of authority or anything else, those who professed most, if disobedient, were counted worse than the most depraved, who repented and did the will of God. I press this the more strongly, because the recovery of the precious truth of Christ's resurrection exposes some, by a kind of reaction, to weaken the value which His death has in God's mind, and ought to have in our faith. In Moses-like fashion, Jesus proves that he is both the leader of the crowds and the intercessor to the divine. He does not say that the church will be the instrument necessarily that is preaching this gospel. And the gospel will be proclaimed to the whole inhabited world, for a testimony to all nations--and then the end will come. (iv) This is all to say that Christianity brings a new conscience into life. Was there anything answering to the welcome of the little ones who cried Hosanna, the type of what grace will effect in the day of His return, when the nation itself will contentedly, thankfully take the place of babes and sucklings, and find their best wisdom in so owning the One whom their fathers rejected, the man thereon exalted to heaven during the night of His people's unbelief? Thus Paul declares that it was preached to every creature under heaven Colossians 1:6, Colossians 1:23; that the faith of the Romans was spoken of throughout the whole world Romans 1:8; that he preached in Arabia Galatians 1:17, and at Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum Romans 15:19. In Revelation chapter thirteen, it tells you about the false Messiah, and the false Prophet, who will lead the world to worship the false Messiah. Now the early Christians did look for the Second Coming immediately. Their real character would soon appear, hypocrites though they were, and a serpent brood: how could they escape the judgment of hell? 1. But if man was silent, it was the Lord's place not merely to question but to pronounce; and in Matthew 23:1-39 most solemnly does the Lord utter His sentence upon Israel. vol. Present application of the truth is lacking, the sword of the Spirit is no longer in the hands of those who wielded it so well To honour those who have passed away is the cheapest means, on the contrary, for acquiring credit for the men of this generation. To report dead links, typos, or html errors or suggestions about making these resources more useful use the convenient, Baker Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Their fathers killed the witnesses of God who, while living, condemned them; they, the sons, only built to their memory when there was no longer a present testimony to their conscience, and their sepulchral honours would cast a halo around themselves. In their situation of suffering and persecution they looked and longed for the release that the coming of their Lord would bring, and sometimes they took sayings which were intended to speak of the Kingdom and attached them to the Second Coming which is a very different thing. 19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! They appear to have founded it upon the remarkable prophecy of Isaiah.