In my last post, I said there were three options for Matthew 24:1-35: it could refer to Christ's final return, it could be talking about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD, or it could be discussing the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ. I said I swung between option 2 and 3: the temple destruction and Christ's death. But even as I was preaching, I was conscious that I had dismissed the connection of earlier sections of the chapter with the second coming of Christ too easily.

The main reason was verse 34—that “this generation will not pass away until all these things take place”. I said, linguistically, this really did refer to the generation alive when Christ spoke these words and not to a much longer era.

So what about the actual “coming of the Son of Man”? This ‘coming’ (= ‘parousia’ in the Greek) is directly referred to in verses 27 and 30, and now in verses 37, 39 and 44, with a related reference to another ‘coming’ word in verse 42. I am fairly convinced now that this coming of the Son of Man must refer to the final return of Christ to judge the world.

Why do I think this? Elsewhere in this Gospel, the phrase refers to the final coming and judgement:

• Matthew 25:31-32: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
• Matthew 16:27: “For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.”

Furthermore, like Jesus in this chapter, other New Testament authors also use the imagery of the coming of Christ being like a thief and being accompanied by a trumpet. With regards to the thief imagery, consider

• 1 Thessalonians 5:2: “For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” (Cf. 1 Thess 5:4.)
• 2 Peter 3:10: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”

With regards to the trumpet imagery, note these references:

• 1 Corinthians 15:51-52: “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.”
• 1 Thessalonians 4:16: “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.”

Presumably Paul and Peter got these images of thief and trumpet and the manner of their application from Jesus himself, (indirectly via oral tradition in Paul's case). For example in Matthew 24, Jesus mentions the trumpet blast in verse 31 just after his coming in verse 30, and the thief image in verse 43—again, as he mentions of his coming. That is, if Peter and Paul applied these images to the final coming of Christ, then presumably it's because Jesus used these images the same way himself. It would seem strange to use them in entirely different ways than the Lord.

So I think there's little doubt that with talk of the coming of the Son of Man, Jesus is referring to his final ‘coming’. And in the material which follows from Matthew 24:36-25:13, he's also addressing the possibility of its delay from a human perspective.

It seems like a bit of a compromise, but perhaps Matthew 24 had multiple fulfilments. Some bits fulfilled at one level, and other related bits fulfilled later at a second, more complete level. I've heard this called prophetic telescoping sometimes—where you can see several stars as you look up a telescope tube, but you can't tell if they're equally close or perhaps at different distances. Why? Because you lose depth perception. I think the reader of Matthew 24 faces the issue of telescopic loss of distance perception. Matthew 24:3 suggests the disciples thought several events would occur together: judgement on the temple, Jesus' second coming and the end of the age. But Jesus suggests that these events may be spread out more widely in time. There's judgement on the Jerusalem temple following the rejection of Jesus on earth. That did happen in that generation's lifetime. But there's a later judgement as the Son of Man comes at the end of the age after worldwide gospel preaching, and at different times in chapter 24, one of these events is in the foreground and the other is in the background, and vice-versa.

What do you think? (Especially if you are Peter Bolt!)

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