This chapter is based on Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21:5-38.
(HLv 421)
Christ’s words to the priests and rulers, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matthew 23:38), had struck terror to their hearts. The question kept rising in their minds as to the import of these words. Could it be that the magnificent temple, the nation’s glory, was soon to be a heap of ruins?
(HLv 421.1)
The foreboding of evil was shared by the disciples. As they passed with Him out of the temple, they called His attention to its strength and beauty. The stones of the temple were of the purest marble, some of almost fabulous size. A portion of the wall had withstood the siege by Nebucadnezzar’s army. In its perfect masonry it appeared like one solid stone dug entire from the quarry.
(HLv 421.2)
The view before Christ was indeed beautiful, but He said with sadness, I see it all. You point to these walls as apparently indestructible; but listen: The day will come when “there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
(HLv 421.3)
When He was alone, Peter, John, James, and Andrew came to Him. “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?” Jesus did not answer by taking up separately the destruction of Jerusalem and the great day of His coming. He mingled the description of these two events. Had He opened to His disciples future events as He beheld them, they would have been unable to endure the sight. In mercy He blended the description of the two great crises, leaving the disciples to study out the meaning for themselves. When He referred to the destruction of Jerusalem, His prophetic words reached beyond that event to that day when the Lord shall rise out of His place to punish the world for their iniquity. This entire discourse was given, not for the disciples only, but for those who should live in the last scenes of this earth’s history.
(HLv 421.4)
Christ said, “Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in My name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.” Many false messiahs will appear, declaring that the time of the deliverance of the Jewish nation has come. These will mislead many. Christ’s words were fulfilled. Between His death and the siege of Jerusalem many false messiahs appeared. The same deceptions will be practiced again.
(HLv 422.1)
“And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end [of the Jewish nation as a nation] is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there will be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” The rabbis will declare that these signs are the token of the advent of the Messiah. Be not deceived; the signs that they represent as tokens of their release from bondage are signs of their destruction.
(HLv 422.2)
“Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for My name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.” All this the Christians suffered. Fathers and mothers betrayed their children, children their parents. Friends delivered friends up to the Sanhedrin. The persecutors killed Stephen, James, and other Christians.
(HLv 422.3)
Through His servants, God gave the Jewish people a last opportunity to repent. He manifested Himself in their arrest and trial, yet their judges pronounced on them the death sentence. By killing them, the Jews crucified afresh the Son of God. So it will be again. The authorities will make laws to restrict religious liberty. They will think they can force the conscience, which God alone should control. This work they will continue till they reach a boundary over which they cannot step. God will interpose in behalf of His loyal, commandment-keeping people.
(HLv 422.4)
When persecution takes place, many stumble and fall, apostatizing from the faith they once advocated. Those who apostatize in time of trial will, to secure their own safety, bear false witness and betray their brethren. Christ has warned us of this, that we may not be surprised at the unnatural, cruel course of those who reject the light.
(HLv 423.1)
Christ told His disciples how to escape the ruin to come on Jerusalem: “When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.” This warning was given to be heeded forty years after, at the destruction of Jerusalem. The Christians obeyed the warning, and not one perished in the fall of the city.
(HLv 423.2)
“Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day,” Christ said. He who made the Sabbath did not abolish it. The Sabbath was not rendered null and void by His death. Forty years after His crucifixion it was still to be held sacred.
(HLv 423.3)
From the destruction of Jerusalem, Christ passed on rapidly to the last link in the chain of this earth’s history—the coming of the Son of God in majesty and glory. Between these two events, there lay open to Christ’s view long centuries of darkness, centuries for His church marked with blood, tears, and agony. Jesus passed these scenes by with a brief mention. “Then shall be great tribulation,” He said, “such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.”
(HLv 423.4)
For more than a thousand years, persecution such as the world had never before known was to come upon Christ’s followers. Millions of His faithful witnesses were to be slain. Had not God’s hand been stretched out to preserve His people, all would have perished.
(HLv 424.1)
Now, in unmistakable language, our Lord speaks of His second coming: “If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect... . If they shall say unto you, Behold, He is in the desert; go not forth: behold, He is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” From thousands of gatherings where men profess to hold communion with departed spirits is not the call now heard, “Behold, He is in the secret chambers”? This is the claim that spiritism puts forth. But what says Christ? “Believe it not.”
(HLv 424.2)
The Saviour gives signs of His coming and fixes the time when the first of these signs shall appear: “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.”
(HLv 424.3)
At the close of the great papal persecution, Christ declared, the sun should be darkened, and the moon should not give her light. Next, the stars should fall from heaven. And He says, “When ye shall see all these things, know that He is near, even at the doors.” Matthew 24:33, margin. Christ says of those who see these signs, “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” These signs have appeared. Now we know of a surety that the Lord’s coming is at hand.
(HLv 424.4)
Christ is coming with great glory. A multitude of shining angels will attend Him. He will come to raise the dead and to change the living saints; to honor those who have loved Him and kept His commandments, and to take them to Himself. When we look on our dead, we may think of the morning when “the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” 1 Corinthians 15:52. The King will wipe all tears from our eyes, and present us “faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.” Jude 24. “When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.”
(HLv 425.1)
But Christ stated plainly that He Himself could not make known the day or the hour of His second appearing. The exact time of the second coming is God’s mystery.
(HLv 425.2)
Christ continues: “As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the Flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the Flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
(HLv 425.3)
How was it in Noah’s day? “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5. The inhabitants of the antediluvian world followed their own unholy imagination and perverted ideas. Because of their wickedness they were destroyed. Today the world is following the same way. The transgressors of God’s law are filling the earth with wickedness. Their gambling, dissipation, lustful practices, and untamable passions are fast filling the world with violence.
(HLv 425.4)
Christ said, “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” Before the fall of Jerusalem, Paul declared that the gospel was preached to “every creature which is under heaven.” Colossians 1:23. So now, the everlasting gospel is to be preached “to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.” Revelation 14:6. Christ does not say that all the world will be converted, but that “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” By giving the gospel to the world it is in our power to hasten our Lord’s return. We are not only to look for but to hasten the coming of the day of God. See 2 Peter 3:12. Had the church done her appointed work as the Lord ordained, the whole world would before this have been warned, and Jesus would have come.
(HLv 426.1)
Because we know not the exact time of His coming, we are commanded to watch. See Luke 12:37. Those who watch for the Lord’s coming are not waiting in idle expectancy. They are purifying their souls by obedience to the truth. With vigilant watching they combine earnest working. Their zeal is quickened to cooperate with divine intelligences in working for the salvation of souls. They are declaring the truth that is now specially applicable. As Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses each declared the truth for his time, so will Christ’s servants now give the special warning for their generation.
(HLv 426.2)
But Christ brings to view another class: “If that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to smite his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him.”
(HLv 427.1)
The evil servant does not say that Christ will not come. But by his actions and words he declares that the Lord’s coming is delayed. He banishes from the minds of others the conviction that the Lord is coming quickly. His influence confirms men in their worldliness and stupor. Earthly passions, corrupt thoughts, take possession of the mind. The evil servant smites his fellow servants, accusing and condemning those who are faithful to their Master. He mingles with the world, and with the world he is taken in the snare. “The lord of that servant shall come ... in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites.”
(HLv 427.2)
The advent of Christ will surprise the false teachers. Upon all who make this world their home, the day of God will come as a snare, as a prowling thief. Full of rioting, full of godless pleasure, the world is asleep in carnal security. Men laugh at warnings. “Tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.” Isaiah 56:12. We will go deeper into pleasure loving. But Christ says, “I come as a thief.” Revelation 16:15. When the scorner has become presumptuous, when the routine of money-making is carried on without regard to principle, when the student is eagerly seeking knowledge of everything but his Bible, Christ comes as a thief.
(HLv 427.3)
The signs of the times are ominous. Coming events cast their shadows before. The Spirit of God is withdrawing from the earth, and calamity follows calamity. Where is security? There is assurance in nothing human or earthly.
(HLv 427.4)
There are those who are waiting, watching, and working for our Lord’s appearing. Another class are falling into line under the generalship of the first great apostate. The crisis is stealing gradually upon us. The sun shines in the heavens, passing over its usual round. Men are still eating and drinking, planting and building. Merchants are still buying and selling. Men are contending for the highest place. Pleasure lovers are crowding to theaters, horse races, gambling hells. The highest excitement prevails, yet probation’s hour is fast closing, and every case is about to be eternally decided. Satan has set all his agencies at work that men may be deceived, occupied, and entranced until the door of mercy is forever shut.
(HLv 427.5)
“Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.”
(HLv 428.1)