p. 388 | The Day and Hour

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 9, 1868

The Day and Hour.

“But of that day and hour, knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in Heaven; neither the Son, but the Father.” Mark xiii, 32.

“It may be seen strange that the Son, who declared that he would come, and who, in the prophecy, had been pointing out the various signs by which his disciples might foresee his approach, should not have known the day and the hour, nor the particular time of his own coming. This difficulty some endeavor to obviate by supposing that our Lord spake of himself here only as a man. But the name Father following that of Son, shows that he spake of himself as the Son of God, and not as the son of man. Besides, the gradation of the sentence seems to forbid this solution. For the Son being mentioned after the angels, and before the Father, is thereby declared to be more excellent than the angels, which he is not in respect to his human nature, and therefore cannot be supposed to speak of himself in that nature.”

“The proper translation of the passage, I think, affords a better solution. The Greek word here seems to have the force of the Hebrew conjugation, hiphil, which in verbs denoting action, making that action, whatever it is, pass to another. Wherefore the word, which properly signifies I know, used in the sense of the subjugation hiphil, signifies I make another to know, I declare. The word has this meaning without dispute in 1 Cor. ii, 2: I determined to know nothing among you, that is, I determined to make known, to declare nothing among you but Jesus Christ. So likewise in the text, ‘But of that day and that hour none maketh you to know, no, not the angels, neither the Son, but the Father only.’”—Macknight.