Our Lord's declaration before the High Priest.



MATT. xxvi. 61.

'Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said : nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.'
MARK xiv. 62.

'And Jesus said, I am : and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.'
Luke xxii. 69.

'Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God.'




The reply of our Saviour to the solemn adjuration of the high priest is the almost verbatim repetition of what He had declared to the disciples on the Mount of Olives,-- 'They shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory ' (Matt. xxiv. 30). It is evidently the same event and the same period that are referred to. The language implies that the persons addressed, or some of them, would witness the event predicted. The expression 'Ye shall see' would not be proper if spoken of something which the hearers would none of them live to witness, and which would not take place for thousands of years. Our Lord therefore told His judges that they, or some of them, would live to see Him coming to judgment, or coming in His kingdom. This declaration is in harmony with what our Saviour said to His disciples,-' The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels. . . . Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man in his kingdom' (Matt. xvi. 27, 28). Some of His disciples, and some of His judges, would live long enough to witness that great consummation, less than forty years distant, when the Son of man would come in His kingdom, to execute the judgments of God on the guilty nation. This is precisely what the prophecy on the Mount of Olives asserts: 'This generation shall not pass,' etc. Here again we have neither obscurity nor ambiguity. But can as much be said for the interpretation which makes our Lord's words refer to a time still future, and an event which has not yet taken place ? Can as much be said for the interpretation which finds in this scene, which the Jewish Sanhedrim were to witness, no one distinct and particular event, but a prolonged and continuous process, which began at the resurrection of Christ, is still going on, and will continue to go on to the end of the world ?

This strange interpretation, which is that of Lange and Alford, is based partly on the assumption that our Lord's prediction has never yet been fulfilled, and partly on the word 'henceforth,' which is held to indicate a continuous process. (1) But is such an explanation credible, or even conceivable ? Is it true that the high priest and the Sanhedrim began from that time to see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven ? etc. How could such an apparition be a continuous process ? Plainly, the words can only refer to a definite and specific event; and we can be at no loss to determine what that event is. It can be no other than the Parousia, so often predicted before. That was not a protracted process, but a summary act,-- sudden, swift, conspicuous as the lightning. The sense is well expressed by the editors of the 'Critical English Testament: ' The meaning cannot be, that immediately after the moment of His answer He should so come, and they so see Him; but rather that He would now depart from them, and that when they next saw Him, after His rejection by them, it would be at His coming in glory, as foretold by the prophet Daniel.' (2)

We find, then, in this declaration of our Lord an additional confirmation of His previous statements that His coming again would take place within the period of the existing generation. Some of His judges, as well as some of His disciples, were to witness it; and there would be no meaning in such an assertion if it did not imply that they were to witness it 'in the flesh.'



Prediction of the Woes coming on Jerusalem.

LUKE xxiii. 27-31.-- 'And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them, said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the (lays are coming in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry ?'

Here we have a statement so clear, so definite in every point that can fix its reference, -time, place, persons, circumstances,-- that no room is left for uncertainty. It points to a time which was not far distant, but at hand-' the days are coming; '-a time which the persons addressed and their children would live to see; -- a time of great tribulation, which would fall with peculiar severity upon womanhood and childhood; -- a time when, in the agony of their terror, despairing multitudes would cry to the mountains and the hills to fall on them and cover them.

Those memorable details will be found most valuable in the elucidation of Scripture prophecy at a subsequent stage of this investigation. Meanwhile it is clear that this pathetic description can refer only to the catastrophe of Jerusalem in the last days of her history. We have only to turn to the pages of Josephus for the facts which illustrate and confirm our Saviour's language. The horrors of that tragic history culminate in the episode of Mary of Peraea, whose Thyestean banquet horrified even the merciless banditti who prowled like famished wolves through the city. It is in the light of an incident like this that we see the full meaning of the words, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare.'

It is with a movement of something like impatience that we listen to Stier, beguiled by the ignis fatuus of a double sense, insisting on a hidden meaning in our Saviour's words: 'He spoke expressly and primarily of the judgment of Jerusalem and Israel, yet He contemplated and refers to that which was shadowed out in this historical type,-the judgment of all the impenitent, and of all unbelievers in common, down to the last." (3) So also Alford, following Stier. It is only in the imagination of the expositor, however, that this ulterior reference exists: there is no suggestion of it in the text; and it is with a degree of wonder that we find a scholarly critic so far forgetting his true vocation as to pronounce 'the historical and actual specific fulfilment' to be 'the least thing: the meaning of the word reaches much further.' If ever there was a case in which double meanino's and typical fulfilments are not to be thought of, surely it is here. At such an hour of anguish, there could be but one thought present to the heart of Jesus. He saw the gathering storm of wrath in which the devoted city was soon to be enveloped, and which would burst with such violence on the tender and delicate, the children and the mothers of Jerusalem. , and He reciprocated the pity which He received from those compassionate hearts,-- more touched in that moment by their anticipated woes, than by His own. What need is there to go beyond that tragical catastrophe, and seek for another concerning which the context is altogether silent ?

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