And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
And before him shall be gathered all nations, х panta (G3956) ta (G3588) ethuee (G2380)] - or, 'all the nations.' That this should be understood to mean the pagan nations, or all except believers in Christ, will seem amazing to any simple reader. Yet this is the exposition of Olshausen, Stier, Keil, Alford (though latterly with some diffidence), and of a number, though not all, of those who hold that Christ will come the Second Time before the millennium, and that the saints will be caught up to meet Him in the air before His Appearing. Their chief argument is, the impossibility of any that ever knew the Lord Jesus wondering, at the Judgment Day, that they should be thought to have done-or left undone-anything "unto Christ." To that we shall advert when we come to it. But here we may just say, that if this scene do not describe a personal, public, final judgment on men, according to the treatment they have given to Christ-and consequently men within the Christian pale-we shall have to consider again whether our Lord's teaching on the greatest themes of human interest does indeed possess that incomparable simplicity and transparency of meaning which, by universal consent, has been ascribed to it. If it be said, But how can this be the General Judgment, if only those within the Christian pale be embraced by it?-we answer, What is here described, as it certainly does not meet the case of all the family of Adam, is of course so far not general. But we have no right to conclude that the whole "Judgment of the great day" will be limited to the points of view here presented. Other explanations will come up in the course of our exposition and following Remarks.
And he shall separate them - now for the first time; the two classes having been mingled all along up to this awful moment --
As a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats (see Ezekiel 34:17.)