Ib.
'Of that day, and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which
are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.'
I cannot explain myself here; but I have long thought that our Saviour
meant in these words [Greek: ainittein taen theotaeta ahutou]--and that
like the problem proposed by him to the Scribes, they were intended to
prepare the minds of the disciples for this awful mystery--[Greek: ei
mae ho pataer]--"unless, or if not, as the Father knows it;" while in
St. Matthew the equivalent sense is given by the omission of the [Greek:
oud' ho uhios], and its inclusion in the Father. 'As the Father knoweth
me, so know I the Father'.
It would have been against the general rule of Scripture prophecies, and
the intention of the revelation in Christ, that the first Christians
should have been so influenced in their measures and particular actions,
as they could not but have been by a particular foreknowledge of the
express and precise time at which Jerusalem was to be destroyed. To
reconcile them to this uncertainty, our Lord first teaches them to
consider this destruction the close of one great epoch, or [Greek:
aion], as the type of the final close of the whole world of time, that
is, of all temporal things; and then reasons with them thus:--"Wonder
not that I should leave you ignorant of the former, when even the
highest order of heavenly intelligences know not the latter, [Greek:
oud' ho uhios, ei mae ho pataer]; nor should I myself, but that the
Father knows it, all whose will is essentially known to me as the
Eternal Son.
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