Godbey, W.B.
(On Matthew 24:15-18)
"Therefore when you may see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet [Daniel 9:27], standing in the holy place, let the one reading take notice then; let those who are in Judea go. to the mountains; and let him who is on the housetop not come down to take things out of his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to take his garments." A.D. 66, Gallus, the Roman general, laid siege to Jerusalem, succeeded, A.D. 68, by Vespasian, the emperor, who was succeeded by his son Titus, A.D. 71, who prosecuted the war to its awful end, as the Jews were divided into bloody factions, and were killing one another, and would not surrender to the Romans. Read Josephus, and you will find the horrors of the siege beggared all description — famine raging, people dying in piles; pestilence, arising from the putrefying corpses, sweeping the city with the besom of destruction far more terrific than the sword, which was also devouring them on all sides, till a solid million perished, and a million more were sold into slavery, the city utterly destroyed and left without an inhabitant. After fifty years a Roman colony was founded on the memorable site where Jerusalem once stood, even the name being dropped, and the new Roman city was called Elia Capitolina the ensuing two centuries, till the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, who came thither, revived the city, and restored the sacred name, Jerusalem. When the Roman armies effected all entrance through the walls, they at once set up their battle-flags on the Holy Campus, on the summit of. Moriah, taking possession of the temple and all the holy places. This was the "abomination of desolation" — "abomination," because the Roman gods were pictured on it, and the soldiers worshipped them as they looked on the flags; and "desolation," because those battle-flags meant the destruction of Jerusalem. Jesus notified His disciples that the moment they saw these Roman battle-flags floating from the pinnacles of the temple, they should all recognize it as the signal for, them to make their escape. Their flight was to be so sudden that, if on the housetop, they were not. to come down. N. B. — You can now run all over Jerusalem on the flat roofs of the houses, as the narrow streets are overarched, the buildings being continuous, jam up to the wall, which is a part of the contiguous edifice. Consequently they could run to the wall on the roofs of the houses and pass down, thus making their escape, which must be sudden and expeditious, or they would be intercepted and detained.
(On Luke 21:22)
"Because these are the days of vengeance, to fulfill all things which have been written." Josephus says that a sword, suspended from the pinnacle of the firmament, was visible in the blue sky, hanging over the city a whole year before this awful siege. He also says that a strange man walked upon the walls of the city some time before the siege, crying aloud, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" continuing. there to walk and utter this awful sentence of coming doom till a stone struck him and he fell dead.
(On Matthew 24:28)
"For where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together." The vulture belongs to the eagle species, and is evidently here referred to as always voraciously feeding upon carrion. At that time the Jewish State-Church had reached such a culmination of political and ecclesiastical corruption that she was already odorizing the elements, and attracting the vultures from afar. Within forty years those revolutionary fires, then rankling in the deep interior of her putrefying vitals, burst forth into a terrific volcano, disgorging the fiery venom of internal corruption, and transforming into an awful whirlpool, swallowing up her time-honored institutions into the oblivion of an eternal night, and actually annihilating the Jewish polity forever.
(On The End of the 'World')
"The popular idea of the end of the world is unscriptural. Matthew 24:3, which reads, "end of the world," should read, "end of the age." The Greek word is not cosmos (world), but aeon (age, or time).
(On Hebrews 12:30,31)
"These verses set forth the appalling doom of the hopeless apostate having fallen into the hands of an infinitely just and holy God, with no Christ to intercede for him. This paragraph, and verses 26-31, vividly describes the hopeless doom of the Palestinian Christian who repudiates Christ and apostatizes to Judaism. The rank and file of the Jewish church, with their pastors and official members, unfortunately rejected Christ, endorsed His crucifixion as a malefactor, plunged into idolatry and hastened to their awful doom of destruction and slavery under the invasion of the Roman armies which followed the writing of this letter in a few years. A most powerful combination of social, ecclesiastical and consanguineous influences were brought to bear on the Palestinian Christians to lead them into this awful apostasy with their Jewish brethren."
(On Matthew 12:43-45)
"When the unclean spirit may go out from a man, he goeth through dry places seeking rest, and findeth none." But what was their history? They retrogressed into cold, dead formality and bleak, hollow hypocrisy, which were seven times worse than their old idolatry. Consequently they rejected their own Christ, and put Him to death, imputing all of His mighty works to the devil, thus grieving away the Holy Spirit, committing the unpardonable sin, provoking the righteous indignation of the Almighty, bringing on them the Roman armies, precipitating their own swift destruction. (Vol. 6 , Gospel Harmony 1, p. 218)
(On Revelation 2:10)
"10. "You shall have persecution ten days." The term "day" in the Bible frequently means a period. During the three hundred years of blood and slaughter, there were ten distinct persecutionary epochs, inaugurated and prosecuted by the different emperors, all of whom endorsed and reiterated the cruel edicts of Nero, the originator of the persecutions. Pursuant to these imperial edicts they did their utmost to exterminate Christianity in the Roman Empire, which at that time embraced the known world. The persecutions purified the Church, kept her under the blood, filled with perfect love, robed and ready, and fearless of bloody death."
[ Go Back ]
Planetpreterist.com Copyright © by Planet Preterist - (355 Reads) |
