CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 13:14. The abomination of desolation.—Hebraism for the abomination that makes desolate. See Daniel 9:27; Daniel 11:31; Daniel 12:11. A comparison of this verse with the parallel passage in Matthew 24:15-16, makes it evident that the scene of this was to be the Temple. Once already had it been desecrated (1Ma. 1:54), when Antiochus Epiphanes set up the statue of Jupiter on the altar of burnt sacrifice. But a worse profanation was yet to follow. Josephus (Wars of the Jews, IV. vi. 3) mentions an ancient saying current among the Jews, that “Jerusalem would be taken, and the Temple be destroyed, when it had been defiled by the hands of Jews themselves”—a prophecy that was literally fulfilled when, during the first siege of Jerusalem under Cestius (A. D. 68), the Temple was taken possession of by a band of Zealots, who committed fearful outrages of lust and murder within its sacred precincts. Such, in the opinion of the writer, was the portent to which Christ pointed as the signal to His followers to lose no time in seeking a place of safety beyond Judea. Flee to the mountains.—History records that when the time came the Christians fled from Jerusalem and Judea to Pella, identified with the ruins of Fahil, among the hills of Gilead.
Mark 13:17. Woe to them.—Alas! for them … Cp. Luke 23:28-29; and see Josephus, Wars, VI. iii. 4.
Mark 13:18. In God’s mercy the prayer which the Christians doubtless offered in accordance with this injunction was heard, and the awful calamity of a winter flight averted. The Roman army first encompassed Jerusalem in October, when the weather is still mild; and the final siege took place in April or May.
Mark 13:19. Josephus unconsciously echoes these words: “All calamities, from the beginning of time, seem to me to shrink to nothing in comparison with those of the Jews.” He gives an awful description of these calamities in Wars, VI. iii.
3. See also Tacitus, History, Mark 13:13; Milman, History of the Jews, Mark 2:16; Merivale, History of the Romans, 6:59.
Mark 13:20. The city which had stood the siege of Nebuchadnezzar for sixteen months (2 Kings 25:1-6; Jeremiah 39:1-2) was taken by the Romans in less than five. Among the providential circumstances which combined to bring this about may be mentioned—
(1) the order of Claudius forbidding Herod Agrippa from completing the fortifications;
(2) the wars of factions in Jerusalem itself;
(3) the destruction by fire of large stores of provisions;
(4) the Jews’ abandonment of the towers on the approach of Titus;
(5) the swift and energetic measures of the Roman armies.
Mark 13:22. False Christs.—Not necessarily assuming the name of Christ, but pretending to a fuller revelation than Christ’s. Theudas; Simon Magus. False prophets.—See Josephus, Antiquities, XX. viii. 6; Tacitus, History, Mark 13:13. Cp. also 2 Thessalonians 2:1-10. To seduce.—With a view to leading astray. Whether or not successful in this, Christ leaves an open question for the future to decide.
Mark 13:28-29. See R. V. rendering.
Mark 13:30. This generation.—Always used by Christ of persons then living on earth (Matthew 11:16; Matthew 12:41-42; Matthew 12:45; Matthew 23:36; Mark 8:12; Mark 8:38; Luke 7:31; Luke 11:30-32; Luke 11:50-51; Luke 17:25). Evidently, then, the terminus ad quem of “all these things” is the destruction of Jerusalem.
Mark 13:32. Neither the Son.—He who as Son of God possesses with the Father and the Holy Spirit the Divine attribute of omniscience, condescended as Son of Man to acquire during His earthly life only such instalments of knowledge (Luke 2:52) as were consistent with a creaturely form of existence (Philippians 2:6-7). The knowledge of the time of the Last Advent being wholly unnecessary to the Church, was not communicated to Him, its Head. The main thing to remember as to this limitation is that it was voluntary on our Lord’s part—a Self-emptying for the purposes of His Mission to our fallen race.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 13:14-32
(PARALLELS: Matthew 24:15-36; Luke 21:20-33.)
Christ’s manifestation in glory.—The manifestations of Christ are not exhausted yet. The Infant, the Child, the Man, the Worker of miracles, the Teacher by parables—He has been revealed to us as all these; but there is still another revelation of Him to come in the unknown future. He came once to visit us in great humility; He shall come again to judge us in glorious majesty.
I. There will be a manifestation of Christ in truth and unmistakable reality.—Till the moment of His coming it will be possible to deceive. False prophets were the bane of the old dispensation; false Christs are the bane of the new. We scarcely wonder that false Messiahs could command followers at a time like the siege of Jerusalem. It was just the crisis from which they would expect a Messiah to deliver them. But we do wonder, and we ought to wonder, that false Christs have arisen since, and that they arise still. That men who do not believe that Christ has come yet should be prepared to accept a self-styled Christ, if only his credentials satisfy them, is at least consistent, if not almost excusable; but for men who believe that Christ has already come, and then discredit His perfect life and Divine teaching by seeking elsewhere for light and guidance—for these we have no excuse, no explanation. Whatever may be said of the results of Christian effort in these days, there can be no question as to its tendencies. Give it full power and fair play, and it would reform the world. This is as much as to say that, so far forth as Christianity succeeds in exhibiting Christ, so far she is a trusted leader of society. Where she has failed to help the world, she has failed to represent Christ. Our contention is, and must be, this: that Christianity leads to Christ, and Christ to God; that the knowledge of God is the highest of all knowledge; that all which leads away from Him must end in nothingness, and can but be a loss to those who gain it. There is an inherent “deceivableness of unrighteousness”—an essential capacity for “strong delusion”—as to the highest of all truths which we are led by the Holy Spirit always to expect, and increasingly till the end of time, possibly that the contrast at the end might be the more marked. While they are all at their very busiest, and the “very elect” themselves almost dizzy with the whirl in the religious air, He will stand before them, true and unmistakable. “Every eye shall see Him” then; the mists from men’s minds and the cobwebs of men’s weaving will be swept away, and at that moment they shall know, even as they, are known. “I am the Truth” will be condemnation enough for millions in that day, if no other sentence were to proceed out of His mouth.
II. Christ will be manifested in universality.—At present it is here and there, as men carry the message. Dark corners have to wait till they can be attended to. “Go ye into all the world and preach” is the world’s only chance: for “how shall they hear without a preacher?” Nor is this all. It was not enough to light the lamp of the Tabernacle with heavenly flame; it required daily tending and replenishing with oil. We overcome the darkness of night with artificial light; and we keep up the gospel light in men’s hearts by human means. If Christ is our Sun of Righteousness, it is only to be expected that He should seem sometimes to set. The Church is His own devised system for arresting His beams and deriving His rays to ourselves. But the coming of the Son of Man shall be no longer, as it is now, like the coming and the going of the sun in the heavens—a sun, too, whose light can be admitted or excluded at will. It shall be rather like the lightning-flash, of which you say, “It is lightening in the east,” and yet, at the selfsame moment, it is in the west too—the lightning which seems to follow no law, but penetrates everywhere—awfully beautiful, irresistibly destructive, fearfully silent, and which has done its work, its irreparable work, before the roar of the thunder is heard. The highest attract it first, and yet it may pass the highest and strike the lowest. All that we can say for certain is, that whatsoever withstands it in its course will utterly be destroyed. Lightning always appals, though it leaves us unscathed. Its downward dart suggests a doomed mark, and its rapid zigzag forbids us to guess its aim; all are in peril where any one may be struck. It may well be that the suspense at the coming of the Son of Man will be the first instalment of the torments of the lost.
III. The awfull majesty in which He will appear.—This is set forth in the appalling changes that will come over the material heavens. The sun darkened, so that the moon can no longer shine with his reflected light—an image, surely, of the helplessness of the blinded followers of blind leaders. The stars falling from heaven, as not presuming to govern this night of no mere physical darkness, and in a dismay corresponding to the joy with which they sang together when the corner-stone of the earth was laid. The powers of heaven shaking, as in anticipation of their “passing away with a great noise.” And then the appearance of the sign of the Son of Man. What that sign shall be—whether, as Christian history leads us to suppose, the sign of the Fiery Cross, or whether rather a new sign, corresponding to the new heavens and the new earth—we cannot tell. Christian poetry may weave thoughts into scarcely understood words, so that for a time we think that we picture it; meditation may help us to forget ourselves, till we say, “I feel it, but I cannot put it into words”; we can approach it in similes and illustrations; but when all is done, we shall but have listened, felt, thought as men; and as men we still must confess at last, “We cannot bear it now.”
IV. Christ will be manifested then as in search of His own.—It were idle to ask, “Who would not be of the elect then?” It is more to the purpose to inquire, “What do men mean by being ashamed of Christ now?” It is to shew no faith, no love, no trust; it is to put man before God, to put worldly men before the saints; it is to give the lie to all our religious phrases, and falsify all our Christian hopes; it is to tempt God to take us at our word and say, “According to your faith, so be it done unto you.”—E. T. Marshall.
Mark 13:32. The limitations of our Lord’s manhood.—It has generally been considered very difficult to reconcile the passage before us with the doctrine of the Deity of Christ. The common explanation, which refers our Saviour’s ignorance of the date of the approaching judgment to His human nature only, is indignantly denounced as a miserable subterfuge by those who deny His Divinity. And even some of the ablest among the orthodox have abandoned this interpretation as unsatisfactory, if not evasive. To us, however, it seems perfectly just and Scriptural; while its supposed difficulties admit, we think, of solutions which are not only sound in logic, but are commonly applied in the interpretation of many other passages. We shall endeavour to support this opinion in the following argument.
I. Jesus Christ, while truly God, was also truly man, and therefore possessed a human soul.—Innumerable acts and feelings are attributed to Christ in the Scriptures, which, on the one hand, are incompatible with the nature of God, and, on the other, could not be asserted of any mere physical organisation. “He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” “He groaned in spirit and was troubled” at the grave of Lazarus. “He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” “In all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren.” He prayed unto the Father “with strong crying and tears, and was heard in that He feared.” “He increased in wisdom, and in favour with God and man.”
II. The union of the Divine and human natures in the person of our Lord did not extinguish or confound the essential attributes of either.—We can easily understand that two different natures, distinguished by the most opposite qualities, may yet be so connected as to constitute one person. We experience the truth of this in our own mysterious conformation. But this implies no confusion of their separate peculiarities. Because the body and the soul, in their present inexplicable conjunction, make up the individual man, does it follow that matter thinks, or that mind is extended in three dimensions? And if not, why should we imagine that the finite and the Infinite lost their respective differences and were merged into a common medium in the person of Immanuel, God with us? The widest possible diversity subsists between these two classes of attributes. And if we are justified in pronouncing the properties of the circle and the square to be intrinsically incompatible, we may surely maintain that the union of Deity and manhood in the person of the Lord left the essence of each undestroyed, unabsorbed, entire, and perfect in all its qualities.
III. Omniscience is one of the incommunicable attributes of God, in which, therefore, the reasonable soul of Christ had no participation.—Of God, and of God alone, can it be said that “His understanding is infinite.” When, therefore, omniscience is ascribed to the Redeemer, it must be understood of His Divine, not of His human nature. We may, indeed, with good reason believe that the rational soul of Christ received successive and great additions of knowledge from its connexion with the Eternal Word; but these, whatever their amount, did not exalt the creature into an equality with God. We have already quoted the scripture which declares that Christ “increased in wisdom.” Now that which is susceptible of increase is clearly at an infinite distance from infinity. If, then, the knowledge of the man Christ Jesus, however extended, was still the knowledge of a creature, and therefore finite, what inconsistency is there in believing that there were secrets in the counsels of God concealed even from Him?
IV. Though the union of the Divine and human natures in the Saviour involved no permutation or absorption of their respective peculiarities, it constituted Him one person, of whom, therefore, the attributes of God and man might be predicated indifferently.—The inspired writers affirm many things of Christ which are true only of His Divine nature—many which, in strictness of speech, apply only to His humanity. Yet they seldom mark the distinction. They did not think it necessary to say that “by Him,” in His Divine nature, “were all things created”—“by Him and for Him,” that is, as He was God; “and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist,” considering Him as Divine. They did not say that, as God, “He is Lord of all”—that, as one with the Father, He is “the First and the Last”—that “Thou, Lord, in the beginning,” by Thine eternal power and Godhead, “hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thine hands.” Nor did they usually adopt any such guarded phraseology in speaking of Jesus as man. We do not read that, in His human nature, “He was an hungered”—that, as man, “being wearied with His journey, He sat thus on the well”—that, as partaker of flesh and blood, “He was in the hinder part of the ship asleep on a pillow”—that, in His character as a creature, He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” Sometimes, it is true, we meet with qualifying expressions in reference to His humanity—such as, “according to the flesh,” “the offering of the body of Jesus,” etc. But these instances are comparatively few, and easily accounted for by the context; while, in the current phraseology of the Scriptures, both Divine and human attributes are given to Christ without any express limitation of either to the one nature or to the other. Is it any harder to believe that the human soul of Jesus was left in ignorance of future times and seasons, than to believe that it sorrowed, complained, and prayed?
V. It may be asked, “But is not such a method of interpretation somewhat unnatural? Is it not assumed without proof?”—We think that in answering these questions we can produce a form of expression exactly parallel to that against which the objection is raised, yet employed in general conversation without ever incurring the charge of impropriety or any danger of misconstruction. No one will deny that, in the opinion of an immense majority, the body and the soul of man are two different natures, distinguished by opposite and incompatible qualities. It is equally clear, as we have already observed, that this conjunction involves no loss and no confusion of their characteristic peculiarities. There is a mutual influence of the two natures, we readily admit. The feelings and volitions of the mind act on the nerves of the body; and certain affections of the nerves produce sensations in the mind. But matter is still matter, mind is mind; and this reciprocal activity of both occasions no interchange or assimilation of their several powers. And yet we familiarly employ, with reference to man in general, language which is strictly true only of one part of his nature. We do this continually in common discourse, and in written style, without formally announcing the distinction; and we do it without any risk of misinterpretation. We say of any individual with whom we are acquainted that he is tall or short, light or heavy, brown or fair. Yet we never think of adding a prudent parenthesis to inform the company that we are speaking only of the body of the individual in question. On the other hand, we describe the same individual, it may be, as imaginative, choleric, or timid—as fond of reasoning, or deficient in memory, or conscientious even to scrupulosity. Yet we do not deem it necessary to restrict the application of these phrases to the spiritual nature of the man. The two classes of attributes are too distinct to be confounded. And were not the Divine and human natures of our Lord as perfectly distinct in all their powers? Are the qualities of the creature and the perfections of God so much alike as to be distinguished with difficulty, and perpetually liable to be confounded? Assuredly if error of this kind be rendered anywhere impossible, from the nature of the case, it is so in the incarnation of “the Mighty God.” It has been observed by an eminent writer that “the pet texts of a Socinian are quite enough for his confutation with acute thinkers. If Christ had been a mere man, it would have been ridiculous in Him to call Himself the Son of Man; but being God and man, it then became, in His own assumption of it, a peculiar and mysterious title.” The same remark may be applied, we think, to the passage now under consideration. Let the name of any of the prophets or apostles be substituted for the designation of Christ, and a sentence is produced at which even a Socinian might stagger. “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither Moses, but the Father.” It matters little what particular name is selected for the experiment. Isaiah, Daniel, Paul, or John, in such a collocation, would be alike incongruous with the whole phraseology and spirit of the Bible. Why, then, would such an announcement have revolted us, while the name of the Son, in this identical connexion, awakens no surprise? Manifestly because the human soul of Christ, from its conjunction with “the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the express image of His person,” was admitted to a knowledge of the counsel of God which is never ascribed to any other creature; manifestly because “in Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” The audacity of those who deny the possibility of such a union has been too often rivalled by the presumption of others who have pretended to explain it. On such a subject our only wisdom is to receive, with the faith of “little children,” the words “which the Holy Ghost teacheth,” not “adding to them, lest we be reproved.”—J. M. Mackenzie.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 13:14-18. A fruitful warning.—As they were not to linger in the guilty city, so we are to let no earthly interests arrest our flight—not to turn back, but promptly and resolutely to flee unto the everlasting hills. As they should pray that their flight through the mountains should not be in the winter, so should we beware of needing to seek salvation in the winter of the soul, when the storms of passion and appetite are wildest, when evil habits have made the road slippery underfoot, and sophistry and self-will have hidden the gulfs in a treacherous wreath of snow.—Dean Chadwick.
Mark 13:18. Winter flight.—How late is it to begin our flight from the world and sin in the winter of old age and death! In the winter the days are short, the ways bad, the season rainy, the night comes on before we are aware, and we meet with a thousand impediments and hindrances of flight and travelling: these are a lively representation of those hindrances of salvation which men find at the end of their lives. The grace to prevent them by a speedy conversion is obtained only by prayer.—P. Quesnel.
Mark 13:22. False Christs.—There have been many of them. David George, for instance, who ultimately settled at Basle, where he died in 1556. He claimed, according to the account of Dr. Henry More, to be the true Christ, the dear Son of God, born not of the flesh, but of the Spirit. He was to restore the house of Israel, and re-erect the tabernacle of God, not by afflictions and death, as the other Messiah, but by that sweetness, love, and grace that were given him of the Father. He had the power of the remission of sins, and had come to administer the last judgment. He averred that “the Holy Scriptures, the sayings and testimonies of the prophets, of Christ, and of His apostles, do all point, if rightly understood, in their true mystery, to the glorious coming of David George, who is greater than the former Christ, as being born of the Spirit, and not of the flesh” (Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, § 34). This David George, says Dr. More, was a man “of notable natural parts, of comely person, and a graceful presence.” And he had many adherents, who believed in him. In our own day there are persons—out of asylums—who put forth corresponding claims. There is lying before the writer a Tract on the Second Advent fulfilled, in which it is said that “the enrolling of the saints commenced on the anniversary of the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles of the year 1868, that is, on the 9th of October, 1868. The following,” it is added, “is the declaration to be made and signed: ‘I believe Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah at His first coming and the antitypical Paschal Lamb who died for sin in allegory, and I believe John Cochran of Glasgow to be that Messiah at His second coming and the antitypical High Priest who has taken away sin in reality.’ ” Of all such persons it has, in consequence of their obscurity, to be said, “Lo, here! Lo, there!” “Believe not,” says our Saviour.—J. Morison, D.D.
False prophets.—They have been legion in number. Lodowick Muggleton, for instance, who, on the title-page of his True Interpretation of the whole Book of the Revelation of St. John (1746), describes himself as “one of the two last commissionated witnesses and prophets of the only high, immortal, glorious God, Christ Jesus.” Madame Antoinette Bourignon, before him, was a far nobler being, yet she declared to Christian de Cort: “I am sent from God to bring light to the world, and to bear witness to the truth. He has sent me to tell that the last times are come; that the world is judged, and the sentence is irrevocable; that the plagues are begun, and will not cease till all evil be rooted out; and that Jesus Christ will come shortly to the earth to finish this, and then He will continue to reign with ‘men of goodwill,’ who shall enjoy eternal peace. I am sent with a commission to declare all these things to men, to the end that peradventure some of them may be converted and repent, that they may reign with Jesus Christ in His glory.”—Ibid.
False Christs and false prophets.—In those days it was an adventurer who traded on the religious enthusiasm of his compatriots—led them out to some desert or to some mountain-side to enjoy for a moment the delirium of an impossible delusion, and then, perhaps, to suffer the punishment of a supposed political offence. In our days it is a sceptical friend, it is an article in a review, it is the general atmosphere of the social circle in which we live. Our faith is undermined by people who talk and write in the very best English, and who have so much about them that is winning and agreeable that we cannot believe what is really going on. Still, after a time, we find that we have less hold on the Unseen than we had, that prayer is more difficult, that conscience is more sluggish, that religious exertion of all kinds is more unwelcome; and this, I say, means that the soul’s hold of the central realities is, to say the very least, weakened, if that is, indeed, anything like a full and true account of what has taken place. We cannot go on breathing a bad air, and be as we were when we lived high up upon the mountain, unless we take very great precautions. Not to take them under such circumstances as these is to be in the fair way to forfeit perseverance.—Canon Liddon.
Mark 13:25-27. The Second Advent.—The second coming of Christ will be even as the first coming at His incarnation—an historical fact taking place on the world in which we live; not anything like a figure of speech, but breaking violently into the uniform and hitherto unbroken continuity of time and nature, and thus freeing the soul and spirit of man from those physical relations on which man is now dependent, and giving the soul fresh opportunities and hopes in a world where all will be glorious. Such will be the second coming of Christ—the perfecting of the first. Not partial, however, and gradual as His first coming, when Christ was revealed here to one and there to one; but seen and recognised by all the tribes of the earth. Not gradual, for it has taken long to spread the Church, and the work is very far from being done even now; but sudden and instantaneous—revealed as a flash of lightning. By one act and one appearance will He unite the greatest terror with the greatest glory; He will transform the world and nature and time; He will judge the living and the dead, and carry the children of God to the inheritance of eternal life.—Jas. Lonsdale.
Mark 13:30. Two horizons.—In that landscape of the future, of which our Lord permitted His disciples to catch a glimpse in this great discourse of “the last things,” there were two horizons—one near at hand, the other afar off. “The boundary line of either horizon marked the winding up of an æon; each was a great ending; of each it was true that the then existing generation, first in its literal sense, then in its wider sense of ‘race,’ should not pass away until all had been fulfilled.” One event was the end of the Jewish nationality, the other the end of the world. The former was in many respects the type of the latter. The signs, both in the natural and moral world, which preceded and accompanied the overthrow of Jerusalem are measurably the same as those which will characterise the last ages of the world. And hence it is not easy to determine with precision what signs are applicable solely to one event, and what are applicable solely to the other. In true prophetic style they are much intermingled. But we must not forget that they are the words of “One whose whole being moved in the sphere of eternity and not of time”; that moral warning rather than chronological indication is the real object of prophecy; and that “to the voice of prophecy, as to the eye of God, all time is but one eternal present.”
Mark 13:31. The perishable and the imperishable.—
I. The things which shall pass away—the perishable things, the destructible things, the things which in this visible economy seem never to continue in one stay, and at last shall perish for ever.
1. Thus see what traces of instability and decay are written on the things men chiefly love and live for. Riches, honours, comforts, friends—youth, beauty, genius, strength—the prospering enterprise, the unfolding hope, the fellowship of kindred minds, and the hallowed domestic ties,—how slight is our hold on the fairest and best of these things!
2. See the same truth inscribed on what we might have thought would have a more enduring life; namely, the triumphs of man’s intellectual nature—the inventions of art, the applications of science, the treasures of literature, the profound researches of the learned, and the ingenious discoveries of the wise: all these are found to be of the earth, earthy.
3. Again, how strikingly are we reminded of this law of mutability and decay, as applied to all earthly things, when we contemplate the history of nations.
4. But not to indications, in the history and moral circumstances of mankind only, are we to limit the application of our Lord’s words. As the foregoing verses shew, the final consummation will be preceded by a mighty disturbance among the elemental powers of nature. Who shall say how soon all visible and material things, consumed and scattered, as it were by the springing of some invisible mine, may be called upon to shed the light of their dissolving glory on the day of Christ, and testify to the imperishableness of His words?
II. Christ’s words shall not pass away.—
1. Because they are founded on eternal truth, and on the fixed purposes of the unchangeable Jehovah.
2. Because of the eternal power and Godhead of Him who spake them.
3. Because of their connexion with His own glory as the Divinely constituted Mediator.—D. Moore.
The permanence of Christ’s words.—
I. The words which Jesus spake while on earth are permanently associated with our whole life.
II. All our literature is enriched by these words.
III. That which is spiritual must always be more permanent than the material.
IV. Yet the material prepares the way for the spiritual application.—
1. A lesson of warning, since we are in danger of attaching too much importance to the form, and too little to the truth, which the form embodies.
2. A lesson of encouragement; opinions may change and interpretations differ, but the truth remains always the same.—F. Wagstaff.
Mark 13:32. Christ’s voluntary limitation of knowledge.—What forbids us to believe that His knowledge, like His power, was limited by a lowliness not enforced, but for our sakes chosen; and that as He could have asked for twelve legions of angels, yet chose to be bound and buffeted, so He could have known that day and hour, yet submitted to ignorance, that He might be made like in all points to His brethren? Souls there are for whom this wonderful saying, “The Son knoweth not,” is even more affecting than the words, “The Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.”—Dean Chadwick.
To me this means that He who was to judge the world, who knew what was in man, and more, who alone knew the Father, was at that time content to have that hour hidden from Him—did not choose to be above the angels in knowing it—as He was afterwards content to be forsaken of the Father.—Dean Church.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 13
Mark 13:15-16. The danger of delay.—
1. Opportunity is like a string of stepping-stones across a ford. The traveller, coming up to them, may find the river so swollen with the rains that the stones are all but covered. If he delay, though his home be on the opposite bank, and full in sight, it may be too late to cross, and he may have a journey of several miles to reach his home.
2. Opportunity is like a narrow passage in the Arctic Seas. Sometimes, in these northern regions, ships get enclosed in a narrow space between ice-islands. The floating rocks glide nearer the ship on every side, and the dismayed seamen behold their only chance of escape from the fatal crash lies in a narrow channel, that every moment grows still narrower. How hurriedly they press their vessel through that strip to reach the safety of the open ocean! Even so must we press along the narrow way that leads to eternal life; for who knows how soon that narrow way may be closed against him.
Mark 13:18. The horrors of a winter flight.—In the autumn of 1812 Napoleon entered Moscow with 120,000 soldiers, intending to pass the winter there in comfort. On October 13th (three weeks earlier than it had ever been known before) snow began to fall. The proud emperor looked out of his window in dismay, and decided to hasten back at once, and establish his winter quarters in the friendly cities of Poland. It was a march through a dreary and desolate region, of more than a thousand miles; but he put on a bold front, and the troops began to retire in good order. A week later, and the grand army was in full retreat. Bleak, chilly winds howled through the leafless trees; the weary soldiers were blinded by the flakes of snow and sleet; their embittered enemies attacked them in every unguarded point; order and discipline were forgotten; the ranks were broken, and each man struggled on as best he could; the dead and the dying were trodden down; hundreds of horses were slain for food; all ideas of conquest were banished; Napoleon himself left the army to its fate; and each day’s weary march was marked by heaps of broken waggons, and abandoned cannon, and white hillocks of snow, beneath which the frozen bodies of man and beast were buried. With such a dreadful picture of misery before you, it will be easy to understand the tender compassion which prompted the Saviour to say, “Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter.” Especially ought we to remember those who are suffering the sad privations of poverty, and be glad to relieve their wants when we are able.
Mark 13:22. Danger of deception by false Christs.—In the frescoes of Signorelli we have “The Teaching of Antichrist”—no repulsive figure, but a grand personage in flowing robes, and with a noble countenance, which at a distance might easily be taken for the Saviour. To him the crowd are eagerly gathering and listening, and it is only when you draw close that you can discover in his harder and cynical expression, and from the evil spirit whispering in his ear, that it is not Christ.
Mark 13:28. A sign of summer’s approach.—When Dr. Rees preached last in North Wales, a friend said to him, “You are whitening fast, Dr. Rees.” The old gentleman did not say anything then; but when he got to the pulpit he referred to it, and said, “There is a wee white flower that comes up through the earth at this season of the year—sometimes it comes up through the snow and frost; but we are all glad to see the snowdrop, because it proclaims that the winter is over and that the summer is at hand. A friend reminded me last night that I was whitening fast. But heed not that, brother; it is to me a proof that my winter will soon be over, that I shall have done presently with the cold east winds and the frosts of earth, and that my summer—my eternal summer—is at hand.”
Mark 13:32. Christ’s second coming is to be of awful suddenness, overtaking a careless world with surprise, and not wholly expected even by the faithful watchman. Of such a sudden and awful change perhaps a faint illustration may be found in the catastrophe which took place about a century ago, when in an Alpine valley the whole side of a mountain suddenly fell and overwhelmed the village below, crushing châlets and houses, burying the church, and covering with earth and stones a merry wedding-party that had just entered the doomed valley. To be without warning or preparation is the character of the Second Advent, as compared with the long-planned arrangements and the deep foundations laid for the First Coming.—Dr. Hardman.