off their preconceptions, and still hankered after a material Messianic kingdom (Ac IB) ; and we may therefore be certain that during the days spent with Him before His death and resurrection, they would have been absolutely unable to under- stand Him had He spoken openly of His continuous spiritual presence, of His spiritual coming during their lifetime to judge Jerusalem, of the long ages of the Gospel Dispensation, and of His final visible return at the end of the world. What He could do. He did. In words that hiddenly contained these truths, He revealed them enigmatically ; and the logic of events would, and did, interpret them to His hearers and to the Church after them.
This characteristic of the sayings of Jesus regarding His Coming accounts in a measure for the ease with which the early Church changed her view as to the time of His return. At first she lived in expectation of an immediate return of her Lord, but when events proved that this hope was in a literal sense illusory, she, without any great rupture of faith, accepted the view that a long period would intervene before she welcomed Him in His glory. And this revolution of thought can best be accounted for by the fact that when He did not come at the expected time, she turned back to the mysterious words with which He had announced His return, and learnt, what circum- stances now made plain, the deeper meaning of His pregnant sayings.
We will now consider the five chief passages which foretell His Coming, taking them not in the order in -which they were spoken, but in that which best helps our investigation.
(1) Jesus, in reply to the question of Caiaphas whether He were the Christ, replied : ' I am ; and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven ' (Mk 14«2). Mt. has, ' Henceforth (dTr' fiprt) ye shall see . . .' (26^^) ; Lk. 'From henceforth (dTro rod vvv) . . .' (2269). It n^ay be that Mk. gives the exact words spoken, and that Mt. and Lk. make the addi- tion to show what they conceived to be the meaning ; but more pf'obably Mk. omitted the ' henceforth,' as not comprehending it. It is evident that Jesus here spoke not of His final Parousia, but rather of an immediate spiritual visitation which from that present moment Caiaphas would experience — a prediction that had not long to wait for its fulfil- ment ; for must not the quaking rocks, the rent veil, and the opened tomb, followed as they were by Pentecost and the victories of the Church, have been felt by Caiaphas as true comings in jjower of Him whom he once thought he had mastered? This passage, then, is full of importance ; for here, without doubt, Jesus spoke of a ' Coming ' other than the final. And it compels us, when consider- ing His other references to the same subject, to inquire whether He refers to ' historic Comings ' or to His ultimate reappearance at the end of the Avorld. It is thought by some that to make His sayings refer to such ' historic Comings,' is to use a modern key, made merely for the purpose of getting out of difficulty (Schwartzkoptt', Proph. of Christ, p. 246) ; but in this passage it can have no other meaning, unless indeed we hold that Jesus errone- ously thought that His final return would be during the lifetime of Caiaphas — a view to most impossible, for it predicates of Him not ignorance but error. On the other hand, we shall find that by the use of His enigmatic words He suggested frequently that His Coming was ' not one but manifold,' and that by His frequent ' historic returns ' in the great crises of the life of Humanity, He would prepare the way for and rehearse His grand final Parousia.
It is remarkable that while Lk. follows Mt. in adding ' hence- forth' to the words of Mk., he separates from both by omitting the reference to the 'Coming'; substituting 'shall the Son of Man be seated at the right hand of power ' for ' ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' Did he feel that ' the clouds of heaven,' as an apocalyptic phrase, was difficult to be understood by his Gentile readers ; or did he miss the point of view that recog- nized many historic Comings? The omission by him of the words ' ye shall see ' points in the latter direction. He under- stood the Session of the Son of Man at the right hand, but failed to grasp a ' Coming ' that would be visible and immediate to Caiaphas. A somewhat similar change is made by him in the great eschatological discourse, where he substitutes ' know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh ' (2131) for ' he is nigh ' (Mk 1329, Mt 2433). It is not that, according to him, there is no final
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coming ; for previously he had recorded (Lk 21 -'■''•'■) the prediction of the signs in the heavens which, following the ' times of the Gentiles, precede the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds with power ; but rather that where the coming does not appear to him as the jinal coming, he substitutes the Coming of the Kingdom for the Coming of Christ. He makes a similar change in the passage which will next occupy our consideration, namely, Mk 9', Mt l(i-f, Lk 9-'. Mk. has ' some . . . shall in no wise taste of death till they see the kingdom of God come with power.' Mt. enlarges it ' till they see the Son of Man coming in liis kingdom,' while Lk. has simply ' till they see the kingdom of God' — a change which makes interpretation easy, but which removes from the words all the allusion to such historic Com- ings as are implied by Mt. and not excluded by Mk.