NOTES for Mat 24:15-31
15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) |
16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains: |
17 Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: |
18 Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. |
19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! |
20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: |
21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. |
22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. |
23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. |
24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. |
25 Behold, I have told you before. |
26 Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. |
27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. |
28 For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. |
29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: |
30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. |
31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. |
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The abomination of desolation in the holy place means apostasy from God, disregard for Him and for what proceeds from Him. And a day may come when the measure of sin and lawlessness exceeds everything imaginable and places the world on the edge of the abyss. Then those who keep faithfulness will have to turn away from the new Sodom, like Lot's family, and cease all participation in its affairs.
One very much wants to "decode" these words, fit them to some era, and calm down: now we know at what moment to begin behaving in the indicated way. But it is impossible to say when the last day will come. Many times over the past centuries events approached that appeared to correspond to what had been predicted, but then the end was postponed again.
The Lord did not give us a schedule of coming events, but He did reveal some important signs of those days. He mentioned a tribulation greater than any before or after it. This brief but capacious mention lets us see that those days will be shortened, and this testifies that the Lord does not want to allow the destruction of the world, even if people do everything they can to destroy it.
And so He warns us to be cautious about rumors of His appearance in the midst of disasters and cataclysms. But how can one distinguish the many false messiahs and false prophets from the True One, if, as He Himself testifies, they will perform great signs and wonders that will make the strongest impression even on the faithful? It is not worth doing so, but one could name a whole series of present-day false prophets who have declared themselves "Christ in the second coming" and managed to make an extremely strong impression on those who trusted them. And all this happens in countries that were once Christian.
The true Son of Man, however, revealed to us here as well a sign of His Second Coming, and it is surprisingly simple, though it does not fit our way of perceiving things: the fact that it is He will be visible to the whole world. And if the first time He appeared in the world unrecognized, then at His second coming no one will have any doubt that this is indeed Christ.
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