Luke 18

Division 3. (Luke 18:35-43; Luke 19:1-48; Luke 20:1-47; Luke 21:1-38; Luke 22:1-71; Luke 23:1-56; Luke 24:1-53.)Restoration, its hindrances and accomplishment; and the peace-offering work by which man is brought nigh. We enter now upon the last division of the book, in which the glorious work is set before us, in that Peace-offering aspect which, as we have seen, gives character to the whole of Luke. For the most part, the history here comes closely together in the three synoptic Gospels, yet with peculiar passages in the present one, such as the story of Zacchaeus and of the penitent thief, which any one would recognize as such. In Luke also, as in Mark only besides, the Lord’s ascension into heaven closes the book; a fact so much the more significant because with the ascension and what immediately precedes this, the same writer commences the Acts. The Father’s house, which we have before seen opened to receive a prodigal, here receives the One whose work has justified this reception. “We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation.”

Luke 18:9-34

Section 5. (Luke 18:9-34.)Man with God: the conditions and hindrances. The last section here closes with the consideration of man’s being with God, the moral conditions and the hindrances. It reviews in this way some things we have had before, but to emphasize some points of special importance in this particular interest, which for man is surely second to no other.

1. The first point here is that of righteousness; in which, however, the righteousness in which we stand before God is rather suggested than developed. Indeed, so much is this the case that the actual reference to it is passed over commonly, both in translations and commentaries. Here it surely supplies what would otherwise be a serious deficiency, when the object is to depict the true righteousness in opposition to the false. The Pharisee and the publican; or tax-gatherer, furnish here, as so often; the contrast which He would present. He is speaking directly to “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:” things which naturally go together. The two men in question are shown us going up into the temple to pray. The position that they take is taken before God, not man. As for the tax-gatherer, that is evident; no one would question it. But as for the Pharisee, though he compares himself with the other, yet he is not presented as seeking credit with men in any way: he is self-righteous, but not a hypocrite.

That he prays, however, with himself, (or toward himself) shows how little in the presence of God he really is, even while he addresses himself to Him. His actual requests we do not hear; they are of no importance, even if we are to suppose he makes any. The whole of it that we hear is a thanksgiving for his own good condition; and here he forms a class by himself, in advance of those whom he vain-gloriously puts down as “the rest of men.” They are “extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or like this publican,” -of whom the less he knows, the more he can imagine. But that is only the negative side: positively, it is enough to say, “I fast twice in the week; I tithe all that I acquire” -all my profit. In either case he went quite beyond the law. There is not a hint that he was insincere in this self-admiration. He was indeed but too thoroughly a believer in himself; and his conduct may have been all that he here claims for it. Outwardly correct, morally; ceremonially, going beyond what was legally required: that was what he honestly thought to be enough for God; and indeed enough to give him that unique place quite beyond others, which, as we see, he claimed. The law, in which he trusted would have told him differently; but when did a law-keeper for righteousness ever take his measure from the law? Nay, that was meant for the destruction of legality, and the “Oh wretched man that I am!” which men learn to cry under it, is at least far different from jubilant Pharisaism. The man’s picture is complete, and no comment upon it is needed further. No one believes in him except himself, just as he himself believes fully in no one else. Moses has given sentence against them all that “there is none righteous, no, not one,” and we know that whatever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God." Now we turn to look at the other man. The Pharisee lifts up his head, because he sees nothing. The tax-gatherer is in a Presence that he dares not approach, nor lift up his eyes to. Smiting upon his breast, as if his heart were viler than his life, he lays hold upon the horns of the altar with the cry, “God be propitiated towards me, the sinner.” That is certainly the full force of his words, and the prevalent objection to its being “pressed” is quite unaccountable. The common version gives “God be merciful” only; the revised puts “be propitiated” in the margin as an alternative, but keeps the other in the text. The “Variorum” Bible, with its clippings from every source, has not even a word with regard to it. Yet propitiation by sacrifice was, as must be acknowledged, one of the leading features of the temple ritual, that temple in which the speaker stood. Moreover it is the Lord, the One who could say of just this sacrificial system, “In the volume of the book it is written of Me” (Psalms 40:7), who gives us this parable. And the direct purpose of it is to show what is true righteousness before God in contrast with the righteousness in oneself in which men have ever trusted. Yet, says Van Oosterzee, “It is entirely unnecessary to press the word hilaskesthai in such a way as to see intimated in it the dogmatic conception of atonement”! On the contrary, here is the very way of mercy which a sinner needs appealed to by one who realizes himself to be in as unique a way “the” sinner, as the Pharisee is in his own thoughts uniquely righteous. For such an, one no vague idea of God’s mercy could satisfy the soul; least of all could the Lord allow it to be supposed that it could; and that where Jewish altars were proclaiming day by day, that “without shedding of blood is NO remission.” How simple, how natural, to one taught of God, and in the representation of a divine Teacher, that a convicted soul should say, “Let that blood avail for me!” “I tell you,” says the Lord, “that this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.” Here again; a wrong use is made, surely, of the comparison between the two. It does not mean that the publican was justified more than the other, nor would such comparative justification be of much comfort to one in his condition. That which avails before God is the whole question; and as the Pharisee had decided as to himself, that he, rather than the tax-gatherer, would be found righteous before God, so the Lord decides that it will be the reverse of this, the tax-gatherer rather than the Pharisee. In each case this means, the one, and not the other. And it is to the one who in the most distinct way disclaims all righteousness, that righteousness is ascribed, or imputed; but not, surely, merely because he owns himself a sinner, but because there is provided for sinners that propitiation for sin to the value of which before God, even though feebly, his faith appeals. Thus we see again, as we have seen elsewhere, how near to Paul’s is the doctrine of Luke, although it brings us only to the threshold of it. Beyond this, still, there are things which cannot be opened to us until the Spirit of God is come from a glorified Christ in heaven, to reveal what neither eye has seen nor ear has heard. 2. The last verse in the previous part opens the way to the present one. The self-abased tax-gatherer has been exalted, the self-exalted Pharisee has been abased. And now they bring babes to Him that He may touch them, and the disciples (too much akin to the Pharisees in spirit) rebuke them for doing so. But Jesus declares that of such the Kingdom of God is, and that whoever would enter it must receive it in the spirit of a little child. Where God is known and rules, man must needs shrink into his native nothingness. Look at the earth from the sun. and what has become of its lofty peaks and granite ranges? The truly wise will own this from the heart: the pride of life, equally with the lusts of the flesh and of the eye, is not of the Father, but of the world. 3. The last portion has brought us fairly into the track of the previous Gospels, and to the end of this division we still pursue it. The story of the rich ruler shows us now the hindrance of worldly possessions, with one in other respects exemplary, and with an apparently earnest craving for eternal life. Yet he turns his back upon the Lord, -sorrowfully indeed, but none the less really; and the Lord’s comment upon it generalizes so sad a case alarmingly. If it were as hard for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God as for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, then who can be saved? ask the disciples. But salvation is of God; and all things are possible with Him.

In fact, if a man has realized his need of salvation; God, it way be hoped, has begun that work in his soul which will make the far off country a place of intolerable famine to him, which lands or gold will be unable to satisfy. He can hardly be called “rich who has that famine-fever upon him. 4. The question of Peter thereupon shows doubtless a modified form of the rich man’s trouble, so far as disciples may be affected by it. They bad left all, -little or much as it might be, -to follow Him: what would they have for it? It is evident that what they have given up has still some value for them, then: and what will be their compensation for it is a matter of concern. The Lord’s answer seems one of encouragement, which has with it also a certain blending of reproof. They shall have what the rich man might well crave -eternal life; but in the present also -and had they not begun to taste that blessing yet? -“manifold more” than all that they had given up. Such is God’s mercy towards those who, whatever they may have deemed themselves to have renounced for Christ, were in fact but bankrupt beggars when His grace laid hold of them! 5. Once more, therefore, He puts before them what was the way that was opening now before Himself. Here indeed was sacrifice -such as yet they prove unable even to comprehend. The end for Him is in resurrection, in which the life of service taken up once more, His joy is accomplished in what for them and us secures all blessing and the glory of God.

Luke 18:35-21

Subdivision 1. (Luke 18:35-43; Luke 19:1-48; Luke 20:1-47; Luke 21:1-36.)The King. The subdivisions are similar to those in Mark: the first giving the first coming of the King, with the fatal hindrances to restoration for Israel at that time, when for a moment it might seem to be at hand; going on; however, to His second coming when that restoration is accomplished. The general character of what is here resembles Mark rather than Matthew, as indeed we might expect; those parts also in which Mark cleaves to Matthew being often omitted by Luke. It is the King, however, necessarily, that is presented here in all the three.

1. (1) That which takes place at Jericho is more fully given by Luke than elsewhere. The story of the blind man, however, is almost precisely as in Mark, Luke showing its character in the closing ascription of glory to God, both on the part of the blind man; and the people who witness it. The beginning of God’s work in a soul, as it was in nature, is the bringing in of light. Israel was now but the blind, led of the blind; and with the light in their midst, the “God of this world darkened the minds of those that believed not, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” We have seen in the blind men here (for Matthew shows us two of them) a picture of that remnant in the last days who shall have their eyes opened to see and follow Jesus as their King. Crying after Him, the multitude in that day will indeed “rebuke them that they should hold their peace,” but they will only cry the louder to Him, who, finding them in the city of the curse, will presently lead them up to the city of blessing, and of His rest for ever. (2) The story of Zacchaeus follows and is still connected with Jericho and the Lord’s passing through it. The name means “pure” or “clean,” as his words to the Lord show him to be. We are to take them surely, not as the profession of what he meant to do, but as the answer to the murmured charge against him, and which implicated Christ also, that He was gone to lodge with a man that was a sinner. “A sinner!” he would say, “behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from any one by false accusation,” -a thing which might be done without design -“I restore him fourfold.” He is speaking of what he does habitually, not of what he has made a new resolve to do. And yet Zacchaeus is no mere Pharisee under his publican’s garb. There may well be the Pharisee in him, for it is in our fallen nature; and the Lord’s words, gentle and gracious as they are, are well adapted to meet such a condition; even while to one characterized by it He could not have used them. For “a son of Abraham” meant with Him assuredly a child of faith (comp. John 8:39); and that day had salvation come to that house, with the Object of faith received within it. Thus, not from that “cleanness” of life that he could claim came salvation to him, nor even the assurance of it, but from Him whom he had sought, who had been seeking Him first: “for the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Such, then, was Zacchaeus. (3) The parable that follows is plainly stated to be supplemental to the Lord’s words just spoken; and in correction of the thought that the Kingdom of God was going to be manifested immediately. Nay, He was as a man going into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom and to return to take possession of it. Time would be given in this way for His servants to prove their faithfulness to Him; and while salvation was by faith, and for the lost, such faithfulness would be recognized and rewarded when the Kingdom would be set up. His ten servants have (like the ten virgins) the number of responsibility, and are not necessarily servants in heart, as we see directly. His citizens moreover are in open rebellion against him, and send after him a positive refusal of subjection to him. All this, of which then His disciples needed to be warned, is, of course, for us as plain as possible in application. The emphasis, however, is laid upon the different result in the case of those who are all entrusted with the same amount, to trade with on his behalf. Here the parable of the pounds differs from that of the talents in Matthew, which comes after it and is a development of it. “Matthew presents the sovereignty and wisdom of the giver, who varies his gifts according to the aptitude of his servants; in Luke it is more particularly the responsibility of the servants, who each receive the same sum, and the one gains by it, in his master’s interest, more than the other. Accordingly it is not said, as in Matthew, ‘Enter into the joy of your Lord,’ the same thing to all, and the more excellent thing; but to the one it is authority over ten cities that is given; to the other over five: that is to say, a share in the kingdom according to their labor. The servant does not lose that which he has gained, although it was for his master. He enjoys it.

Not so with the servant who made no use of his pound; that which had been committed to him is given to the one who had gained ten. That which we gain spiritually here, in spiritual intelligence and the knowledge of God in power, is not lost in the other world. On the contrary we receive more, and the glory of the inheritance is given us in proportion to our work. But all is grace” (Synopsis). It is the apprehension of grace also that enables for work, as we see by the opposite of this in the unfruitful servant, who is indeed to be judged out of his own mouth. His words, however, are but an excuse for slothfulness. “Instead of laboring in the sweat of his brow for the interests of his lord, he had hidden the entrusted money in the now entirely superfluous soudarion: literally ‘sweat-cloth’” (Van Oosterzee.) Upon the enemies of the King judgment comes to the uttermost. 2. (1) With these forewarnings of the character of His Kingdom, and of how His claim to it would be treated at this time, Jesus ascends to Jerusalem, by the way of the “house of unripe figs” (Bethphage) and of the “house of humiliation” or “of sorrow” (Bethany). Then; as in the previous Gospels, He fulfils -or presents Himself for the fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy, riding into the city on an ass’s colt. But it is noticeable how much higher is the character, beyond the former Gospels, in which He is presented here. As Son of David He is not even spoken of, but as the King that cometh in the name of the Lord -Jehovah; and with “peace in heaven; and glory in the highest.” This is a strain, indeed, beyond the intelligence of the disciples; as all here is manifestly under the control of God, and pointing onward to a future time. The King that comes in Jehovah’s Name brings not only peace on earth, but peace in heaven. We have heard the Lord announce already the casting down of Satan out of it (see Luke 10:18), and have seen to what period this refers. It is but, however, the effect of the Cross, as that which has overcome principalities and powers, and led captivity captive. Back of man’s sin; the Cross reaches to the incoming of sin at the beginning, glorifying God about it all. We little realize the need of this, where it is no longer a question of the salvation of sinners, but of the purification of heavenly things (Hebrews 9:23), the reconciliation of things in the heavens (Colossians 1:20).

Scripture speaks plainly of it, however, both in type and open speech of the New Testament. Nor will God deal with sin even in definitive judgment until He has glorified Himself in view of it. “Hallowed be Thy Name; Thy Kingdom come:” such is the divine order. That “hallowed be Thy Name” is in effect “peace in heaven,” as “glory in the highest.” The Pharisees dare to appeal to the Lord Himself to deny Himself, and rebuke the disciples. He tells them that, if they held their peace, the very stones would cry out. As a result of His rejection this has indeed taken place, and the stones of the plowed up city bear witness for Him today. (2) This was the alternative, which His lament over the city brings fully out: it was the Saviour or the destroyer, Christ or the dreaded and hated Roman. In fact, they had already made their choice, and could only be left to it. But the Judge weeps as He gives sentence. If Jerusalem had known; though but at the last moment, the things belonging to her peace! but now they were hidden from her. She and her children within her would be destroyed -not a stone left upon a stone -because she knew not the time of her visitation. (3) But this that He foresaw does not hinder the completion of His testimony among them. He purges the temple: for Him, until. He leaves it desolate, His Father’s house, and the place of Jehovah’s throne on earth, though now long vacant. It was the symbol of His life-long thought, the zeal which was to be as the flame of sacrifice consuming Himself, as the psalmist had long since expressed it (Psalms 69:9). Luke mentions, however, the casting out of the traffickers very briefly, dwelling more upon His teaching in the house that He had purged, and how the people hung upon His words. What seed was sown, to spring up at an after-time, we cannot tell; but we know that He was emphatically the Sower, and that upon all seed sown the sign of the cross must pass, that it may be fruitful (John 12:24). 3. (1) The conflict with the leaders is now upon Him. They begin it with the challenge of His authority, which He answers by one on His side to settle that of John: as to which, to their confusion; but even then insincerely, they have to own incompetence. He refuses then to show them His: for of what use would it be with those who had just acknowledged themselves to be no proper judges? and when the things about which they asked Him bore the authority for doing them upon their lace? (2) The parable of the two sons is here omitted, as in Mark; and Luke goes on to that of the Vineyard and its Heir, and the rejection of the messengers crowned by the murder of the last, the only son of the owner. He searches out their hearts, foretells their triumph and the ruin it would bring upon themselves, shows them from their own scriptures, that the Stone to be made by God the Head of the corner was first of all to be rejected by the builders themselves. Here they could not help recognizing that He spoke of them, while their blind passion urged them on to the fulfilment of His words. 4. (1) They go on testing Him, as in the previous Gospels. First, by the question of tribute to Caesar, in which His answer goes to the root of the matter, and shows the way of deliverance also, if only they would take it. They had borrowed Caesar’s money; let them pay it him back: a just debt could not be met by rebellion and repudiation. On the other hand, there was a way out: let them render to God His due, and He would come in for them. Thus the whole question is settled in a few simple words, and so that they cannot even say a word against it. (2) The Sadducees take the place of the beaten Pharisees, and raise their question of relationship in the resurrection state, illustrating their difficulty by the case of a woman who had married seven brethren. The Lord answers, that marriage belongs to this world or age, while in the age to come and the resurrection from the dead those counted worthy to obtain these will be as the angels in this respect. The Lord’s words announce a resurrection from among the dead comprising the sons of God alone: they are necessarily sons of God if they are sons of the resurrection; the one involves the other. The obtaining the “age to come” (the millennium) goes with this; which is exactly what is said in Revelation 20:5, that the rest of the dead -the wicked -do not rise again till the thousand years are finished. Among the ranks of these blessed ones there is no death either: and so no need of marriage to fill up the gaps caused by death. He adds that even the dead are yet alive to God; and so destroys the materialistic idea of death held by the Sadducees, the basis of their denial of resurrection.

And finally, He proves this last out of the Scriptures they acknowledged -the books of Moses. They acknowledged, but did not know them. (3) They are silenced, -Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees, all the leaders of the unhappy people, -and He turns -upon them with a question which reaches the bottom of the whole controversy, the question of His Person; of the true glory of Christ. Was He merely David’s Son? Why then did David, speaking by the Spirit, call Him “Lord,” saying, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet”? How could He be his Son and yet his Lord? Clearly no answer could be made which did not admit His higher nature. (4) Then He denounces the scribes as those whose ways made known too certainly what they were. Self-importance, rapacity, hypocrisy, marked them. More abundant judgment would be their lot at last. Let us observe that He first meets and refutes their doctrines before He brings their ways into question. Scripture alone could settle as to the truth; and His appeal is there to the Word and nothing else. Truth might have evil professors of it, without annulling its right as truth; but now it was in place to show how sadly their errors were mated with their characters. The common conscience of men was sufficient to condemn them. (5) But He does not close with this, for judgment is work in which He has no delight. If He be wearied with the evil, He refreshes Himself with the good, and among the rich who are casting much into the treasure, His eye discerns a single poor widow who casts in a contribution hardly to be reckoned amid their costly gifts. But He reckons differently from men at large, and not so much by what is put in as by what is kept back. She has kept nothing back. For Him this poor widow has cast in more than all. For these have given out of their abundance, leaving much still behind; but site has cast in all the living that she had. Such sights, then, were still to be seen in Israel. Alas, they were few, as the very terms of the commendation show. For all the gifts of the rich were not equal to these “two mites, which make a farthing.” 5. The Lord’s prophecy from the Mount of Olives has a conspicuous place in each of the three synoptic Gospels: in John only it is not found. Luke’s version of it, however, though approaching that of Mark most nearly, differs in a very striking way from both; and all the more because of its resemblances to them. Matthew gives the fullest account, showing the coming of the Lord in its relation to the Jews, the Church, and the Gentiles. Mark is briefer, and omits altogether the last two; but like Matthew he speaks of the abomination of desolation and the tribulation unequalled in any other time. This last, through the mercy of God very limited in duration; has the abomination as the date of its commencement, and continues till immediately before the appearing of the Lord, -linking in this way the two together, and showing that we are in the time of the end throughout this part. What precedes it is general in character, and might (and doubtless does) take in from the beginning of Christianity, but as a dispensation says nothing of this. It is passed over, quite as in Old Testament prophecy; though in Matthew taken up in its relation to the coming of the Lord in the parables which follow. Luke also says nothing indeed of Christianity as such, and is briefer as to the Lord’s coming and what connects with this.

We have nothing of the abomination nor of the tribulation following, but in place of this Jerusalem encompassed with armies and her being trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles -of the empires pictured by Daniel -are fulfilled. Then follow the signs of the Lord at hand. Luke retains his character in this as the Gentile Gospel; and the smaller details are in harmony with this. Thus there is no angelic mission to gather together the elect; and to the parable of the fig-tree he adds “and all the trees.” The indefinite lapse of time fulfilled in Jerusalem’s desolation, as contrasted with the immediate coming of the Lord after the tribulation which follows the setting up of the abomination; distinguishes in the clearest way the destruction by Titus spoken of in Luke from the signs of the end-time in the other Gospels. Jerusalem at the end is not destroyed but delivered, though at her extremity, by the appearing of the Lord. (1) The commencement of the prophecy is very similar in the three Gospels. In Luke, as in Mark, the disciples, questions have to do entirely with the destruction of the temple, of which He had just been speaking, and only in Matthew have we the additional ones, “What shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the age?” Matthew accordingly it is who develops most fully, as we have seen; the circumstances connected with the end-time and the Lord’s return; while Luke gives the full answer to the question as to the temple. In relation to this, he brings out also as the others do, the false Christs that should arise, the wars and rumors of wars, the convulsions and disasters. But before all these things the hatred of men to Him would break out in the bitter persecution of His followers. The nearest ties would be no restraint; the dearest affections of nature would be turned to enmity. They would be delivered up to the synagogues and brought before rulers and kings; Christ, however, being borne witness to in this way, and the Spirit, therefore, with them to furnish them with the needful ability to glorify Him.

Through all not a hair of their heads would really perish: He who has counted them all would certainly give a good account of them. By endurance they would gain their lives, instead of losing them: by the very loss of them they would keep them, as the Lord assured them before, to life eternal. Upon the guilty city, stained with the blood of the prophets, and now to be with that of their glorious King also, days of vengeance were coming. When they saw Jerusalem encompassed with armies, then they might know that its desolation was near: a very different thing, nevertheless, from the “abomination of desolation” of which Matthew and Mark speak, and which is connected with the middle of the last week of Daniel, while this comes between the sixty-ninth and seventieth in the same chapter: “and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary” (Daniel 9:26). There is really no excuse for confounding things so different, and where the interval between them is so plainly expressed. There are, no doubt, similar warnings to depart from the city, and lamentations over the child-bearing women in each case -as easy to be understood in one connection as in the other. But the omissions in Luke are noticeable. Where the armies encompassing the city are the sign; there is naturally no exhortation as to speediness of departure, no need to pray that it might not be upon the sabbath day. In fact, for those in Jerusalem, such haste would be rather dangerous than wise, and abundance of time was given, after Cestius Gallus had retired from the city, for leisurely departure. All, therefore, is in perfect keeping. How terrible these days of vengeance were is known to all. Josephus gives the number of the slain in the siege as 1,000,000; of those carried away captive as 97,000. The complete fulfilment of our Lord’s words is matter of common history. The times of the Gentiles are not yet concluded, after more than eighteen centuries of treading down; although there are many signs that they are near their end: to what then takes place the prophecy passes on. (2) The signs of the end are more briefly given than in the previous Gospels; signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, answered by the roaring of the sea with its billows from below; between them the nations in distress and perplexity; men ready to die for alarm at what is coming on the earth. There seems good reason to believe that these signs are physical, while yet there are corresponding ones in the political sphere, as the book of Revelation clearly shows. At such a time God’s mercy multiplies His calls to men to give heed to what He is doing; and such mysterious sympathy of nature with human woes gives all the apparent countenance that there may be to the fables of astrology. In such ways man perverts the goodness of God to his destruction. Amid such signs the Son of man will be seen coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Nothing is said of attendant angels or of the gathering of the dispersed of Israel. But when the disciples should see the beginnings of these things, they were to rejoice and lift up their heads, because their redemption was drawing nigh. These would be, in fact, Jewish disciples, such as they were to whom the Lord was now addressing Himself. Christianity was yet unknown, and the long lapse of time designedly hidden. The parable of the fig-tree applies, as we have seen in various places, to the Jewish remnant of returned captives in the land. Since dispersed, as Luke has told us they would be, they are now again gathering there; the fig-tree is shooting. But Luke adds “and all the trees”: in which we are to see apparently, according to the character of Luke, the revival of the nations making up Daniel’s empires. Notable it is that Greece and Italy, after a time of long depression, have again become kingdoms. If we go outside of these, but still within the range of Daniel’s vision, Egypt is also reviving under British care. Certainly the trees seem putting forth their leaves.

The summer surely is already nigh; and there is no summer apart from the Kingdom of God. Again we are reminded, as in Matthew, of the rapidity with which it will at last come on. The generation that sees the beginning will see the end. And here the Lord solemnly affirms the immutability of His word: though heaven and earth pass, this shall not. In view of such a time again there come warnings, lest the world, its pleasures and its cares engross and stupefy the heart, and these things come unawares; for as a snare it will come upon those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. They must watch and pray, that they may prevail to escape, and stand before the Son of man. “This is still the great subject of our Gospel. To be with Him as those that have escaped from the earth, to be among the 144,000 on Mount Zion; will be an accomplishment of this blessing, but the place is not named; so that, supposing the faithfulness of those whom He was personally addressing, the hope awakened by His words would be fulfilled in a more excellent manner in His heavenly presence in the day of glory” (Synopsis).