In silence they pursued their way. Upon the Mount of Olives they sat down, right over
against the Temple. Whether or not the others had gone farther, or Christ had sat apart
with these four, Peter and James and John and Andrew are named7 as those who now
asked Him further of what must have weighed so heavily on their hearts. It was not idle
curiosity, although inquiry on such as subject, even merely for the sake of information,
could scarcely have been blamed in a Jew. But it did concern them personally, for had
not the Lord conjoined the desolateness of that 'House' with His own absence? He had
explained the former as meaning the ruin of the City and the utter destruction of the
Temple. But to His prediction of it had been added these words: 'Ye shall not see Me
henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord.' In their
view, this could only refer to His Second Coming, and to the End of the world as
connected with it. This explains the twofold question which the four now addressed to
Christ: 'Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy Coming,
and of the consummation of the age?'8
7. St. Mark xiii.3.
8. της συντελειας του αιωνος. Godet argues that the account in the Gospel of St.
Matthew contains, as in other parts of that gospel, the combined reports of addresses,
delivered at different times. That may be so, but inference of Godet is certainly incorrect -
that neither the question of the disciples, nor the discourse of our Lord on that occasion
primarily referred to the Second Advent (the παρουσια ). When that writer remarks, that
only St. Matthew, but neither St. Mark nor St. Luke refer to such a question by the
disciples, he must have overlooked that it is not only implied in the 'all these things' of St.
Mark, and the 'these things' of St. Luke - which, surely, refer to more than one thing - but
that the question of the disciples about the Advent takes up a distinctive part of what
Christ had said on quitting the Temple, as reported in St. Matt. xxiii. 39.
Irrespective of other sayings, in which a distinction between these two events is made,
we can scarcely believe that the disciple could have conjoined the desolation of the
Temple with the immediate Advent of Christ and the end of the world. For, in the saying
which gave rise to their question, Christ had placed an indefinite period between the
two. Between the desolation of the House and their new welcome to Him, would
intervene a period of indefinite length, during which they would not see Him again. The
disciples could not have overlooked this; and hence neither their question, nor yet the
Discourse of our Lord, have been intended to conjoin the two. It is necessary to keep
this in view when studying the words of Christ; and any different impression must be
due to the exceeding compression in the language of St. Matthew, and to this, that
Christ would purposely leave indefinite the interval betwee n 'the desolation of the house'
and His own Return.
Another point of considerable importance remains to be noticed. When the Lord, on
quitting the Temple, Said: 'Ye shall not see Me henceforth,' He must have referred to
Israel in their national capacity - to the Jewish polity in Church and State. If so, the
promise in the text of visible reappearance must also apply to the Jewish
Commonwealth, to Israel in their national capacity. Accordingly, it is suggested that in
the present passage Christ refers to His Advent, not from the general cosmic viewpoint
of universal, but from the Jewish standpoint of Jewish, history, in which the destruction