Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." Meanwhile, let us "speak comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her iniquity is pardoned." There is even now a voice which" crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God." "Every valley" seems, by many providences, to become "exalted," and "every mount and hill" to be "made low," "and the crooked" to be "made straight, and the rough places plain." So He has promised it shall be when He shall "bring again Zion." We seem to hear Him Himself say, "Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city." "Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the Lord hath comforted His people, He hath redeemed Jerusalem."1 May He hasten it in His time!

VIII.

he Flaking of the City.

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. MATT. xxiv. 29-34.

B

EFORE entering upon the taking and destruction of the city and the temple, it is important that we have a clear understanding of the meaning of this remarkable statement of our Lord, which forms the motto of this chapter. There are mainly three interpretations of this passage:

1. That it refers to the final judgment, and has no necessary application to the destruction of the city and temple.

2. That it has reference only subordinately to the city, but mainly to the general judgment, the destruction of the city being only emblematic of the final judgment.

3. That the language is primarily and emphatically applicable to the overthrow of the city, the burning of the temple, the destruction of the civil polity of the Jews, and the closing up of the old dispensation.

It seems probable to my mind that the third is the true interpretation. As the subject of the Lord's discourse was the destruction of the city and the temple, with the dissolution of the civil nationality of the Jews, and as all the other circumstances of the prophecy refer to these events, it is in keeping with unity to apply this prediction to the same. The strong language of Christ, with its bold and commanding figures, is not more energetic than is usual in prophetic writings. When Isaiah foretold the ruin of Babylon, he employed very bold figurative language, saying, "For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine." Also, when predicting the overthrow of Idumea, the same prophet used similar language, saying, "And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig-tree. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment."2 When the prophet Ezekiel proclaimed the coming wrath for Egypt he uses this 1 Isa. xiii. 10. 2 Isa. xxxiv. 4, 5.

bold imagery: "And when I shall put thee out I

make the stars thereof with a cloud, and the All the bright lights of

will cover the heaven, and dark; I will cover the sun moon shall not give her light. heaven will I make dark over thee, and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord God." Daniel, when speaking of the conquering power of the little horn, says, "And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them." 2

These illustrations demonstrate that, in prophetic language, great earthly revolutions and commotions, such as the overthrow of a nation, or the signal judgments of God upon men, are represented by unexpected changes in the heavens, as the darkening of the sun and the moon, or the falling of the stars. Inspired authority, then, sustains this principle of interpretation. The prophet Joel, when speaking of the wonderful things which should precede and attend the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the consequent changes which should be wrought in the closing up of the Jewish dispensation and the inauguration of the Christian, uses this energetic language: "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. . . . And I will show wonders in the heavens and in earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come." 3 On the day of Pentecost the apostle 1 Ezek. xxxii. 7, 8. 3 Joel ii. 28-31.

2 Dan. viii. 10.

Peter declared that the scenes previously witnessed in Jerusalem, and on that day, were the fulfilment of that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. Thus is justified the application of figurative commotions in the heavens to illustrate important events on earth. Our Saviour adopted the same bold and highly figurative style, it being the established language of prophecy. So when He would foreshadow the destruction of Jerusalem, He says, "The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken." 1

It is no valid objection to this view that the disciples said, "Tell us, when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?" Because the disciples in their ignorance blended the destruction of the temple with the day of judgment, it does not follow that Christ in His prediction had other than a figurative and secondary reference to the last judgment. Their questions cannot be the rule of interpretation. It was quite natural for them to feel that the day of judgment would come whenever that massive temple should be destroyed. From their earliest childhood they imagined that the temple would stand to the end of time. They felt that the foundations of the universe must also be dissolved, if the massive structures of the temple were so upheaved that "not one stone should remain that was not thrown down."

In the peculiar language of the prediction there are Mark xiii. 24, 25.