The many and persistent attempts, despite the gross inconsistencies involved, to represent the teaching of Christ concerning the Last Things' as only the reflection of contemporary Jewish opinion, have rendered detailed evidence necessary. When, with the information just summarised, we again turn to the questions addressed to Him by the disciples, we recall that (as previously shown) they could not have conjoined, or rather confounded, the when' of these things' - that is, of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple - with the when' of His Second Coming and the end of the Age.' We also recall the suggestion, that Christ referred to His Advent, as to His disappearance, from the Jewish standpoint of Jewish, rather than from the general cosmic view-point of universal, history.
As regards the answer of the Lord to the two questions of His disciples, it may be said that the first part of His Discourse [5469] is intended to supply information on the two facts of the future: the destruction of the Temple, and His Second Advent and the end of the Age,' by setting before them the signs indicating the approach or beginning of these events. But even here the exact period of each is not defined, and the teaching given intended for purely practical purposes. In the second part of His Discourse [5470] the Lord distinctly tells them, what they are not to know, and why; and how all that was communicated to them was only to prepare them for that constant watchfulness, which has been to the Church at all times the proper outcome of Christ's teaching on the subject. This, then we may take as a guide in our study: that the words of Christ contain nothing beyond what was necessary for the warning and teaching of the disciples and of the Church.
The first Part of Christ's Discourse [5471] consists of four Sections, [5472] of which the first describes the beginning of the birth-woes' [5473] [5474] of the new Age' about to appear. The expression: The End is not yet' [5475] clearly indicates, that it marks only the earliest period of the beginning - the farthest terminus a quo of the birth-woes.' [5476] Another general consideration, which seems of importance, is, that the Synoptic Gospels report this part of the Lord's Discourse in almost identical language. If the inference from this seems that their accounts were derived from a common source - say, the report of St. Peter - yet this close and unvarying repetition also conveys an impression, that the Evangelists themselves may not have fully understood the meaning of what they recorded. This may account for the rapid and unconnected transitions from subject to subject. At the same time it imposes on us the duty of studying the language anew, and without regard to any scheme of interpretation. This only may be said, that the obvious difficulties of negative criticism are here equally great, whether we suppose the narratives to have been written before or after the destruction of Jerusalem.
1. The purely practical character of the Discourse appears from its opening words. [5477] They contain a warning, addressed to the disciples in their individual, not in their corporate, capacity, against being led astray.' This, more particularly in regard to Judaic seductions leading them after false Christs. Though in the multitude of impostors, who, in the troubled times between the rule of Pilate and the destruction of Jerusalem, promised Messianic deliverance to Israel, few names and claims of this kind have been specially recorded, yet the hints in the New Testament, [5478] and the references, however guarded, by the Jewish historian, [5479] imply the appearance of many such seducers. And their influence, not only upon Jews, but on Jewish Christians, might be the more dangerous, that the latter would naturally regard the woes,' which were the occasion of their pretensions, as the judgements which would usher in the Advent of their Lord. Against such seduction they must be peculiarly on their guard. So far for the things' connected with the destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Jewish commonwealth. But, taking a wider and cosmic view, they might aslso be misled by either rumours of war at a distance, or by actual warfare, [5480] so as to believe that the dissolution of the Roman Empire, and with it the Advent of Christ, was at hand. [5481] [5482] This also would be a Misapprehension, grievously misleading, and to be carefully guarded against.