The Coming Of The Kingdom
THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM
LUKE 17:20-37
The future judgment is bound to come and will be terrible.
This highly compact passage can only be understood if taken with Matthew’s fuller account of the Lord’s teaching on last things. The Lord answers the Pharisees negatively (17:20) and positively (17:21). 17:20 is a difficult saying, but must mean that no one can predict the coming of the Lord as one can predict the movements of the sky. Meticulous observation fixes sunrise and sunset and the phases of the moon. It will not fix and date the Second Advent. Compare John 1:26. But trouble awaits (17:22), and stressful circumstance, which will make Christians long for God’s decisive intervention, but at the same time expose the careless and the thoughtless to false Messiahs (John 1:10-12). Of such were Theudas (Acts 5:36), and Bar-Kochba, the leader of the last ruinous and desperate Jewish revolt in AD 132.
The consummation of all things comes upon a world utterly preoccupied with its worldly pursuits (17:26), without regard for the minority, the Noah, the Lot, who look for other things than the carnal round of each humdrum day. Suddenly God breaks in. The word “suddenly” is worth studying in the Bible. God’s judgment is as the lightning, flashing unexpectedly forth, visible, decisive (17:24).
And it is judgment which seems to be in view in 17:31, with its specific warning. In Matthew’s Gospel it is striking to observe how, in the parallel account, the nearer and remoter events of history are intermingled. This verse seems to embody a warning about the calamity which was to come upon the land in the awful four years which closed the sixties of the century. The mob had called down judgment on themselves (Matthew 27:25). The Christians of Jerusalem did “remember,” and escaped in large numbers to the Decapolis as the Roman army closed the ring round Jerusalem. The eagles of 17:37 may be a symbol of the legions, each with its eagle standard at the head (see note below). Let one clear message emerge: the end of the age will be God’s intervention. Christians should watch, work, and hold the material world with light hand.
Notes 17:21: RSV “in the midst of you” is correct. 17:25: “generation”—some commentators see this as reference to the Jewish nation. 17:33: “preserve”—Gk. “bring to new birth.” 17:34: possibly husband and wife (“men”—humans). 17:37: “eagles”—vultures. “Where the spiritually dead people are, there the judgment will be executed” (Geldenhuys).