A GREAT LITERAL PROPHECY.
II. From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Second Coming of Christ. Verse 15-28.
"When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies; then know that her desolation is at hand." [Thus reads Luke.] "When therefore ye see the abomination of desolation [reads Matthew and Mark], which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, standing where it ought not (let him that readeth understand); then let them that are in Judea flee unto the mountains; let him that is on the housetop not go down to take out the things that are in his house; and let him that is in the field not return back to take his cloak. And let them that are in the midst of her [Jerusalem] depart out; and let not them that are in the country enter therein. . . . For there shall be great distress upon the land, and wrath unto this people. For these are days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. And pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on a Sabbath." WE learn from this scripture that the Lord, through Daniel, had forewarned concerning the very power which destroyed Jerusalem. Dan. 9:27. When the Jews rejected Christ, they rejected their King, and chose Caesar. They said, "Away with this Man;" "we have no king but Caesar." They put man in the place of God; and tho they afterwards fought Rome, it was still, on their part, man in the place of God. It was the abomination of desolation standing in the place of God, and showing that the judgment of Jerusalem could not long delay. The sign of that judgment came to Jerusalem when the Roman army surrounded that city in A.D. 70, and opportunity was given the disciples and those who believed our Lord's words to flee from the fated city. The details of that awful destruction, and the flight of God's children, we need not now consider. Jesus enjoined them to pray for two things, that the flight be neither in the winter nor on the Sabbath day. He would not have them subjected to the hardships of winter in their flight from the city, nor would He have them violate conscience and His law by profaning the Sabbath. A Type of the Final Destruction.
The destruction of Jerusalem was a type of the last destruction upon an impenitent church and nation. They fell by the edge of the sword, and were led captives into all nations, and Jerusalem was given up to be trodden down of the Gentiles. As the Jewish people then rejected God's means of salvation, putting man in the place of God, so the great apostasy in the Christian church has done the same thing, and will to a still greater extent in the closing days of the Christian era exalt the5man of sin, the mystery of iniquity. Then as the children of God were forced to flee from Jerusalem, with no thought of preservation of earthly possessions, so, in the very last destructions and calamities, the children of God will again flee from the doomed cities as did Lot out of Sodom. The very language used in Matthew relative to fleeing from Jerusalem is used in Luke 17:22-37 in regard to the coming of Christ. And the time draweth near. Following the destruction of Jerusalem began the tribulations of the church of Christ; first through Pagan Rome, which did not always distinguish between Jew and Christian, because both worshiped one God; and secondly, during the Dark Ages of papal spiritual domination, when it seemed at times as tho true faith would be blotted from the earth. The days of this persecution and tribulation are thus spoken of in Daniel 7:25: "And he [the little horn] shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High; and he shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and half a time." "Time" signifies a year; "times," the dual number, two years, a total of three and one-half years; elsewhere called, 1,260 days, forty and two months. See Rev. 12:6, 14; 13:5; 11:2, 3. A day in prophecy signifies a year. The 1,260 days signify so many years. They began when the last of the Arian powers to oppose the assumptions of the Roman bishop was suppressed, and the pope of Rome, as decreed by Justinian, became the "head of all the holy churches," and "true and only corrector of heretics." That was in 538; they ended in 1798, when the pope was taken prisoner by France, and the recognition of Rome's spiritual domination was broken. Thousands and tens of thousands perished during that time. It was the "great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world which God created, until now, no, nor ever shall be." This "tribulation" is not to be confounded with the "trouble" of Dan. 12:1. The "tribulation" was to come upon God's children, the "pressing," to bring out the wine and sweet perfume of sacrifice. The "trouble" comes upon the wicked, from which the children of God escape. The tribulation of the days, for the elect's sake, should be shortened. God would not allow His faithful witnesses to be swept from the earth. In Europe, the great center of world-action, the Reformation had affected statesmen and rulers. In 1776 Maria Theresa, empress of Austria, promulgated a decree of toleration that all sects should be tolerated in her realm. The same year the American colonies declared themselves free and independent states, and opened an avenue to a haven of liberty for the oppressed of all lands. The days began in 538, by the carrying out of Justinian's decree. The persecution ended by decree and proclamation in 1776. The days ended in 1798. A space of twenty-two years intervened between the ending of the persecution and the ending of the days. The end of that prophetic period—the first long prophetic period of Daniel to close—brought the world to "the time of the end" (Dan. 11:35; 12:4), a period during which the seal should be lifted from the prophecy, when many should run to and fro and knowledge should be increased. Men then began in earnest to search the prophetic Word of God. But then also, in order to deceive the searchers and confuse the masses, Satan began to send forth his minions. And so the Master said he would do. Listen: "Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or Here; believe it not. For there shall arise false christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you beforehand. If therefore they shall say unto you, Behold, He is in the desert; go not forth. Behold, He is in the secret chambers; believe not. For as the lightning cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of Man." How literally did our Lord foretell these delusions; how faithfully has He warned His people against their deceptions! The deceivers would come; they have come in these latter days by tens and scores, all over the world. The Spirit of God is arousing longing and expectancy in the hearts of men in all lands; Satan has been stirring up false christs and false prophets in all lands to delude, disappoint, dishearten, and utterly disgust the world in regard to one of the most glorious doctrines of the whole Bible—the second coming of Christ. Two notable deceptions have arisen in this country, among a score of lesser, like Dowie, Sanford, Teed, Schweinfurth, and others. The first of these is Mormonism, and their cry has been, "Behold, He is in the desert." Into the desert of the great West they went and planted the pseudo-Zion. The very name they gave their chief organ was a demonstration of our Lord's words—the Deseret News, still published at Salt Lake City. In many lands their missionaries have gone; earnestly have they preached; miracles have been wrought to support the messages borne; and thousands upon thousands have been deceived, deluded, and led into the Mormon desert, barren of all true spirituality, a mighty blot upon Western civilization. The second of these delusions is Spiritism, whether manifested in so-called Modern Spiritualism, with its rappings, seances, etc., or in "Christian Science," or any of the other isms based on the doctrine of the natural, inherent immortality of man, and depending, to a greater or less extent, on signs and wonders to support its claims. Both of these sects claim that the second coming of Christ is manifest in them. We are told that He appears in the secret cabinet chamber; that He is manifest in the wonderful light given to the world, that He is revealed to us anew as dwelling in our own hearts, tho we knew it not; and millions are thereby deceived. Death, the enemy, is made to appear a friend, and the literal, personal, visible coming of Christ is made of no account, or a thing of ridicule. By the Living Oracles of God we know that the Son of God once came as a Babe in Bethlehem, as a "Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," as a Sacrifice for sinful man, the climax and cumulated evidence of God's eternal, outpoured love; and by the same evidence we know that He is coming again as King, coming personally, literally, visibly, coming in glory transcendent, flooding the heavens and earth with the unwonted splendor of the regal coming of Jehovah of hosts. Not in secret will He come, not locally will He appear, but as manifestly, as vividly, as clearly, as the lightning flash athwart from the east even unto the west, so shall the coming [the parousia, the personal presence] of the Son of Man be." Even so will He come; be not deceived. III. Signs Specific and Definite, which Precede His Coming.