Mark 13:32-37 But of that day and that hour knows no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.… I. TRANSITION FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM TO THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. Again our Lord passes from the typical event to the anti-typical consummation of all things - from the destruction of the holy city to the dissolution of things visible. The limitation of our Lord's knowledge with respect to "that day and that hour" must be understood of his human nature as the Son of man, in which he was subject to such other sinless conditions of humanity as increasing in wisdom, growing in stature, feeling hunger, thirst, lassitude, and the like; or it did not come within the sphere of his prophetic office to reveal it, as it belonged to "the times or the seasons which the Father hath set within his own authority." Our Lord, according to Meyer, knew this κατὰ κτῆσιν, i.e. with respect to possession, of which, however, in his humiliation he had divested himself; not κατὰ χρῆσιν, in regard to use, viz. for revelation. II. THE GREAT EVENTS CONSEQUENT ON HIS COMING. One of these events shall be the resurrection of the dead. "Now," says the apostle, "is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept;" but then shall be this world's great harvest-day. Then shall a shout be heard, so loud, so piercing, that it will reach the dull, cold ear of death; the voice of the archangel shall re-echo through the dismal recesses of the tomb, and call to life the buried dead; the trump of God shall resound through the caverns of earth and the caves of ocean, till earth and sea shall give up the dead that are in them. Then shall be fulfilled the saying of our Lord elsewhere recorded, that "the hour is coming, in the which all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and come forth; they that have done good, to the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation." Further, on his coming at the day or hour here spoken of, the Son of man shall judge the world in righteousness. The dead, small and great, shall stand before him; the judgment shall be set, and the books opened. All nations, and kindreds, and tongues, and peoples shall be assembled at that bar of God; "we must all appear before that judgment-seat of Christ, to give an account of the deeds done in the body, whether they be good or evil." The decisions of that day shall be final, allowing no alteration, no appeal, and no reversal. Not only so; based on the unvarying principles of justice and equity, righteousness and truth, they shall commend themselves to the consciences of all concerned. The condemned and justified alike shall acquiesce in them; sinners shall assent to them as just; saints shall approve of them as gracious; angels shall applaud them as worthy of the Judge; and all intelligences shall acknowledge them to be as impartial as irreversible. III. THE FOURTH PRACTICAL DIRECTION. The fourth great moral lesson of the chapter is watchfulness. This lesson our Lord insists on, repeating it with great earnestness, and conjoining with it the duty of prayerfulness: "Take ye heed, watch and pray;" "Watch ye therefore;" and again, "Watch:" The two duties of watchfulness and prayerfulness are frequently associated; thus, "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation." Both together represent Divine and human strength in co-operation with each other. If we watch without prayer, we depend on human strength, and dispense with Divine aid; if we pray without watching, we depend on Divine strength alone, and despise the human means of help which God himself has commanded us to employ. They are the two strong arms of defense against the evil one; and we may not, we cannot, without serious dereliction of duty and gravest danger, part with either of them. This duty of watchfulness is enforced by a beautiful parabolic illustration; though it is not a formal parable, as the words supplied in the Common Version make it. Those words, "For the Son of man is," should be struck out; equally unnatural is it to supply the words, "The kingdom of heaven is;" neither is Kuinoel's mode of supplying the ellipsis by ποιῶ any better; while Euthymius, who seems to refer the words to Christ and to understand the future of the substantive verb, as though it were, "I shall be as a man setting out on a far journey," is even less satisfactory. In addition to this, απόδημος, said of one "already abroad, or an absentee from his people," is confounded with ἀποδημῶν, which signifies "going abroad." Fritzsche rightly explains as follows: - "Res ita habet ut - die Sache verhalt sich so wie," and compares therewith the Horatian use of ut si in the words, "Ut tibi si sit opus liquidi non amplius urna." So also the Revised Version, correcting both the errors of the Common Version, renders correctly: "It is as when a man, sojourning in another country, having left his house, and given authority to his servants, to each one his work, commanded also the porter to watch." This translation helps us much in the right understanding of the illustration. The man is already abroad; but before he went abroad, he, as a matter of course, left his house, having previously to leaving given authority to his servants in general to manage matters for him in his absence, and having appointed to each in particular his special work; and when on the threshold, as it were, he gave a charge to the porter also to watch, and so be prepared for his return. IV. REASONS FOR THE WATCHFULNESS ENJOINED. Though there is no express application of the illustration, a circumstance which adds much to the ease and grace of the narrative, we are at no loss for, and find no difficulty in making, that application. The Master of the house is our Lord; his disciples, in the first place, are the domestics whom he entrusted with the management of the household when he himself took his departure to the goodly land afar off, appointing each believer his own sphere of labor and the special duty he was bound to perform, and leaving a strict charge of watchfulness with the porter who kept the door; that is, either the ministry in general, who are watchmen on the walls of Zion, or Peter in particular, to whom had been entrusted the power of the keys in opening the door of faith to Jew and Gentile. Nor do we thereby concede anything to the Romanist in reference to Peter's supremacy - a rank which the apostle himself never claimed. Be this as it may, however, the duty of watchfulness is enjoined on all, (1) because the time of the Master's coming back is unknown. We know neither the day nor the hour of our Lord's return. No fellow-creature can tell us; no minister nor man can inform us; no angel can give us any intimation; no messenger from either world can bring us word. "Of that day and of that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of God." Now, though the coming of the Son of man is not to be confounded with death - for the two events are quite distinct - yet for all practical purposes, and as far as our personal interests are concerned, death is the coming of the Son of man to us individually; for whether he come to us or he call us to him, it is virtually the same thing for us, as then our destiny is finally and for ever fixed. We are urged to watchfulness (2) because this event, which, though not the coming of the Son of man to the Church in its universality, is tantamount to his coming to the Christian in his individuality, is uncertain as to time. This great event may be near at hand while we least expect it. This day may be our last, on earth, and our first in the spirit-world; on this very night the soul may be required. This very day our lamp may lose its oil and go out in darkness; this very day our tabernacle may totter and tumble into dust; this very day our wondrous harp, with its thousand strings, may go out of tune and lose its melody. "What is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." What is your lease of life? It is the breath in your nostrils, and at any moment that breath may be withdrawn. In any case - "Determined are the days that fly Successive o'er thy head; The number'd hour is on the wing That lays thee with the dead." Further, watchfulness is indispensable, because (3) at his coming he will deal with us separately and singly. We shall be assembled in the aggregate, but dealt with in detail. The great fact is as prominently stated, as it is positively sure, that we must each stand in his lot at the end of the days. You, reader, and I and all must soon give an account of our stewardship - must soon be reckoned with for the talents, whether ten, or five, or one, that God gave us; whether we have buried them in the earth, or brought them forth employed, improved, and augmented; whether we have wasted our Lord's goods, or used them in his service and for his glory; whether we have occupied till the time of his coming, or loitered out our day of life. We are required to be watchful, for (4) in the last great day each and all - the one and the many - shall stand face to face with the Judge of all the earth. If we pause and ponder the vastness of that crowd, we are almost overwhelmed by the thought. Let us think of all the people of a single nation being brought together; what a crowd they would make! Let us think of all the subjects of a great empire being assembled at one place and at one time; what an assembly that would be I Let us then think of all the inhabitants of one of the quarters of the globe being congregated; what an immense mass-meeting would be thus formed! Yet the thought of the great congregation at the coming of the Son of man far outgoes all that. The assemblage which it implies, and which shall one day take place, shall consist, not only of the inhabitants of a province, or a nation, or an empire, or even a quarter of the globe, but shall comprehend the inhabitants of all provinces, nations, empires, and quarters of the globe, down along the ages and throughout all the centuries of time. And yet not one in all that crowd shall be hidden from the eye of him that cometh in that day; not one shall be able to evade his presence, not one escape his sentence, not one shall be so remote as to be unable to catch a glance of him, not one on whom his eye shall not rest. "Every eye shall see him!" - the eye that contemplated his goodness and his grace; the eye that "beheld his glory, as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth;" the eye that looked and longed for his appearing; the eye, on the contrary, that looked only on the objects of sense and sin, the pomps and vanities of the world, and the follies of life; the eye that never gazed upon the cross, or never cast more than a passing glance thereat, and then turned away in coldness or carelessness, or perhaps contempt; the eye of friend and follower; the eye of foe and false professor. Oh, what a sight to the unpardoned sinner, to the godless transgressor, to the swearer, to the sabbath-breaker, to the slanderer, to the adulterer, to the murderer, to the drunkard, to the liar, to the lewd and licentious, to the unholy and the unjust, to the impure and impenitent! Gladly would the wicked shut their eyes on that sight; gladly would they sink into the bowels of the earth or the depths of ocean to escape the glance of that searching eye! Earnestly will they pray, who never prayed before, for the mountains and rocks to fall on them and hide them from the face of the Judge. But no, that cannot be; for it is added in another Scripture, "They also that pierced him." We all, whether ministers or members of the Church of Christ, are bound to watchfulness - "What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch!" - and that lest (5) we should be found among those that pierced him. This refers to his actual murderers in the first instance - the Jews that condemned him, the Romans that crucified him, the scribes and Pharisees that plotted against him, the priests and people that persecuted him, the passers-by that wagged the head, the men that scoffed him, and those that scourged him, and they that spat upon him; the fierce mob that cried, "Away with him! away with him!" the judge that condemned him, the disciple that betrayed him - all that imbrued their hands in his precious blood or had aught to do with his death. But we may not stop here. Others have pierced him, too; for we read of those who "crucify Christ afresh, and put him to an open shame." Ah! is there any of ourselves included in that number? Is there any of us who have pierced his heart by our sin, by our disobedience, by our ingratitude, by our backsliding, by our coldness, and by our carelessness? Ah! is there none of us to whom he can say, "See, here are the wounds with which I was wounded in the house of my friends"? "Watch ye therefore!" is repeated once and again and a third time. While one of the terms used signifies to keep awake and remain sleepless, the other means to awake or arouse from sleepiness; and thus the sense seems to be, if the distinction is admitted, to guard against sleep overtaking us at the post of duty; or, if unhappily we have been overtaken by drowsiness, to rouse ourselves at once from our slumber and repent of our sinful somnolence. And all the more as we are left in such entire uncertainty and ignorance of the hour when the Master shall come and reckon with us in our individual capacity, and, if we are found culpable, condemn us with the wicked. That hour may be at any of the four watches of the night - nine o'clock, or twelve, or three, or six in the morning. So important is this lesson that our Lord, in St. Matthew's Gospel, enforces it by two parables - that of the virgins and that of the talents; the former inculcating watchfulness over the spirit, and probably implied in ver. 36 of the present chapter; the latter quickening faithfulness in duty, and seemingly epitomized in the two preceding verses of this same chapter. V. OTHER LESSONS OF THE CHAPTER. 1. The truth of Scripture. Besides the lessons already noticed, there are others to which we can only advert. The lessons scattered through this chapter are like flowers in a summer field. Another of these is the truth of Scripture. "Heaven and earth shall pass away." The frame of nature, stable as it now seems, has in it the elements of change. There are changes in the geological strata of the earth beneath us, in the sky above us, in the natural world around us. Great changes have already taken place in earth and sea and sky; great physical changes are daily going on; still greater changes may be expected to occur in time to come. The surest inductions of science point to such changes and collapses. "But my words," said our Lord, "shall not pass away." His words have passed into the spiritual fibre of his people, living in their lives, exhibited in their conduct, illustrated by their character, and consoling them in the hour of dissolution. Statesmen have been guided by them, lawgivers have framed laws by them, philosophers have made more use of them in building up their systems than they have been willing to acknowledge to others, or have even been conscious of, themselves. The words of Christ have for eighteen hundred years or more blended with the inspirations of the poet; they have almost moved in the marble of the statuary, and spoken from the canvas of the painter. Time has not exhausted their fullness; no taint has touched their freshness, nor has aught of their fragrance decayed. Further, the inspiration of Scripture is safely inferred from the statement in ver. 11, "It is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost," compared with St. Luke's parallel statement, "I will give you a mouth," the expression," and wisdom," the matter to be expressed. 2. The publication of the gospel among all nations. The gospel must first be published. Here was the great end to be attained. We have seen how this was virtually accomplished before the fall of Jerusalem; but the world has widened its boundaries since then. Continents and islands have been added to it; navigation and travel have enlarged geography, and geography has added to the dimensions of the globe, or at least has revealed those before unknown. And still the gospel is preached, and shall be. "Jesus shall reign where'er the sun Doth his successive journeys run; His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, Till moons shall wax and wane no more." 3. Watchfulness the lesson of the ages. Scenes similar to those that preceded Christ's coming at the fall of Jerusalem may be repeated, and repeated over a wider area and on a grander scale. Then, as before, there may be wars - some actual, others rumoured - great international conflicts, and fatal internecine strife; then, as before, there may be physical catastrophes, providential visitations, as the travail-throes of greater events - the travail-pangs in the genesis of the new order of things; then, as before, there may be persecutions, prolonged and repeated, and the severance of the nearest ties of kinship, with universal hatred for the Savior's sake. Yet, through all, men must possess their souls in patience, or rather, according to the correcter reading, gain their souls, their real life, by patience - patient endurance, not violent resistance. Men may be worn with watching, pining for peace, and aweary for rest; still the same lesson has to be repeated, the same duty practiced: "What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch!" Watchfulness is still the duty of the Church and of the Christian. "Yet saints their watch are keeping; Their cry goes up, 'How long?' And soon the night of weeping Shall be the morn of song." J.J.G. Parallel Verses KJV: But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. |
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