Matthew 24:30

For in the last days false prophets shall be multiplied, and such as corrupt the word; and the sheep shall be changed into wolves, and love into hatred: for through the abounding of iniquity the love of many shall wax cold. For men shall hate, and persecute, and betray one another. And then shall appear the deceiver of the world, the enemy of the truth, the prince of lies, [2 Thessalonians 2:3-12] whom the Lord Jesus "shall destroy with the spirit of His mouth, who takes away the wicked with His lips; and many shall be offended at Him. But they that endure to the end, the same shall be saved. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven;" [Isaiah 11:4; Matthew 24:1-51] and afterwards shall be the voice of a trumpet by the archangel; and in that interval shall be the revival of those that were asleep. And then shall the Lord come, and all His saints with Him, with a great concussion above the clouds, with the angels of His power, [Matthew 16:27] in the throne of His kingdom, to condemn the devil, the deceiver of the world, and to render to every one according to his deeds. "Then shall the wicked go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous shall go into life eternal," [Matthew 25:46] to inherit those things "which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, such things as God has prepared for them that love Him;" [1 Corinthians 2:9] and they shall rejoice in the kingdom of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

Watch for your life's sake. Let not your lamps be quenched, nor your loins unloosed; but be ye ready, for ye know not the hour in which our Lord cometh. But often shall ye come together, seeking the things which are befitting to your souls: for the whole time of your faith will not profit you, if ye be not made perfect in the last time. For in the last days false prophets and corrupters shall be multiplied, and the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and love shall be turned into hate; for when lawlessness increaseth, they shall hate and persecute and betray one another, and then shall appear the world-deceiver as Son of God, and shall do signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands, and he shall do iniquitous things which have never yet come to pass since the beginning. Then shall the creation of men come into the fire of trial, and many shall be made to stumble and shall perish; but they that endure in their faith shall be saved from under the curse itself. And then shall appear the signs of the truth; first, the sign of an out-spreading in heaven; then the sign of the sound of the trumpet; and the third, the resurrection of the dead; yet not of all, but as it is said: The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him. Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.

But if so great a power is shown to have followed and to be still following the dispensation of His suffering, how great shall that be which shall follow His glorious advent! For He shall come on the clouds as the Son of man, so Daniel foretold, and His angels shall come with Him. These are the words: [...he quotes Daniel 7:9-28]

Then He tells of fearful prodigies. What are these prodigies? "Immediately after the tribulation of those days," saith He, "the sun shall be darkened." Of the tribulation of what days doth He speak? Of those of Antichrist and of the false prophets? For there shall be great tribulation, there being so many deceivers. But it is not protracted to a length of time. For if the Jewish war was shortened for the elect's sake, much more shall this temptation be limited for these same's sake. Therefore, He said not, "after the tribulation," but Immediately "after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened," for almost at the same time all things come to pass. For the false prophets and false Christs shall come and cause confusion, and immediately He Himself will be here. Because no small turmoil is then to prevail over the world. But how doth He come? The very creation being then transfigured, for "the sun shall be darkened," not destroyed, but overcome by the light of His presence; and the stars shall fall, for what shall be the need of them thenceforth, there being no night? and "the powers of Heaven shall be shaken," and in all likelihood, seeing so great a change come to pass. […]

And then shall appear the signs of the truth; first, the sign of an outspreading in heaven; then the sign of the sound of the trumpet; and the third, the resurrection of the dead; yet not of all, but as it is said: The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him. Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.

(Ep. 199, 41.) The first and most apparent meaning of this is of that time when He shall come to judge the quick and the dead in His body--that body in which He sits at the right hand of the Father, in which He died and rose again and ascended into heaven. As we read in the Acts of the Apostles; He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight, (Acts 1:9.) upon which it was said by the Angels, He shall so come as ye hare seen Him go into heaven, we may reasonably believe that He will come again, not only in the same body, but also in a cloud. (ubi sup.) But because the Scriptures are to be searched, and we are not to content ourselves with the surface of them, let us look closely at what follows, When ye see all these things come to pass, know that he is near even at the door. We know then that He is near, when we see come to pass not any of the foregoing things, but all of them, among which is this that the Son of Man shall be seen coming. And he shall send his Angels, who from the four quarters of the world shall gather together His elect. All these things He does at the last hour (1 John 2:18.) coming in His members as in the clouds, or in the whole Church as in one great cloud, as now He ceases not to come. And with great power and glory, because His power and glory will seem greater in the Saints to whom He will give great power, that they may not be overcome of persecution.

"And then they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and majesty." As if it were openly said: They shall see in power and majesty Him whom, placed in humility, they refused to hear, so that they may then feel His power all the more strictly, inasmuch as now they do not bow the neck of their heart to His patience.

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven. Here is set forth the sign of the Son of man existing above the angels. The sign of the Son, i.e., the sign of the victory of Christ; because when the whole …

But nothing hinders our supposing that the sun and moon with the other stars shall for a time lose their light, as we know did the sun at the time of the Lord's passion; as Joel also says, The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and manifest day of the Lord come. (Joel 2:31.) But when the day of judgment is passed, and the life of future glory shall dawn, and there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, then shall that come to pass of which Isaiah speaks, The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold. (Is. 30:26.) The stars shall fall from heaven, is expressed in Mark; There shall be stars falling from heaven, (Mark. 13:25.) that is, lacking their proper light.

(non occ.) As soon as the Lord has fortified the believers against the arts of Antichrist and his ministers, by showing that His coming would be public, He proceeds to show the order and method of His coming.

The Cross will then be seen in heaven shining more brightly than the sun as a reproof to the Jews, for when the Lord comes He will display the Cross as the strongest evidence against the Jews, like one who shows the stone with which …

Not the sound of the great trumpet, mentioned in the following verse; nor the clouds of heaven in this; nor the sign of the cross appearing in the air, as it is said to do in the times of Constantine: not the former; for though to blow a trumpet is sometimes to give a sign, and is an alarm; and the feast which the Jews call the day of blowing the trumpets, Num 29:1 is, by the Septuagint, rendered ημερα σημασιας, "the day of signification"; yet this sign is not said to be sounded, but to appear, or to be seen, which does not agree with the sounding of a trumpet: much less can this design the last trumpet at the day of judgment, since of that the text does not speak; and, for the same reason, the clouds cannot be meant in which Christ will come to judgment, nor are clouds in themselves any sign of it: nor the latter, of which there is no hint in the word of God, nor any reason to expect it, nor any foundation for it; nor is any miraculous star intended, such as appeared at Christ's first coming, but the son of man himself: just as circumcision is called the sign of circumcision, Rom 4:11 and Christ is sometimes called a sign, Luk 2:34 as is his resurrection from the dead, Mat 12:39 and here the glory and majesty in which he shall come: and it may be observed, that the other evangelists make no mention of the sign, only speak of the son of man, Mar 13:26 and he shall appear, not in person, but in the power of his wrath and vengeance, on the Jewish nation which will be a full sign and proof of his being come: for the sense is, that when the above calamities shall be upon the civil state of that people, and there will be such changes in their ecclesiastical state it will be as clear a point, that Christ is come in the flesh, and that he is also come in his vengeance on that nation, for their rejection and crucifixion him, as if they had seen him appear in person in the hea […]

Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man - The plain meaning of this is, that the destruction of Jerusalem will be such a remarkable instance of Divine vengeance, such a signal manifestation of Christ’s power and glory, that all the Jewish tribes shall mourn, and many will, in consequence of this manifestation of God, be led to acknowledge Christ and his religion. By της γης, of the land, in the text, is evidently meant here, as in several other places, the land of Judea and its tribes, either its then inhabitants, or the Jewish people wherever found.

In this part of our Lord’s prophecy he describes his own second coming to judge the world. This, at all events, seems the natural meaning of the passage: to take any lower view appears to be a violent straining of Scripture language. If the solemn words here used mean nothing more than the coming of the Roman armies to Jerusalem, we may explain away anything in the Bible.

In this part of our Lord’s prophecy he describes his own second coming to judge the world. This, at all events, seems the natural meaning of the passage: to take any lower view appears to be a violent straining of Scripture language. If the solemn words here used mean nothing more than the coming of the Roman armies to Jerusalem, we may explain away anything in the Bible. The event here described is one of far greater moment than the march of an earthly army; it is nothing less than the closing act of the present dispensation—the second personal advent of Jesus Christ. These verses teach us in the first place that when the Lord Jesus returns to this world he shall come with peculiar glory and majesty. He shall come “in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.” Before his presence the very sun, moon and stars shall be darkened, and “the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” The second personal coming of Christ shall be as different as possible from the first. He came the first time as “a man of sorrows, and aquainted with grief.” He was born in the manger of Bethlehem, in lowliness and humiliation; he took on him the form of a servant, and was despised and rejected of men; he was betrayed into the hands of wicked men, condemned by an unjust judgment, mocked, scourged, crowned with thorns and at last crucified between two thieves. He shall come the second time as the King of all the earth, with royal majesty: the princes and great men of this world shall themselves stand before his throne to receive an eternal sentence: before him every mouth shall be stopped, and every knee bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. May we all remember this! Whatever ungodly men may do now, there will be no scoffing, no jesting at Christ, no infidelity at the last day.

The sign of the Son of man - The “evidence” that he is coming to destroy the city of Jerusalem. It is not to be denied, however, that this description is applicable also to his coming at the day of judgment. The disciples had asked him Mat 24:3 what should be the sign of his coming, and “of the end of the world.” In his answer he has reference to both events, and his language may be regarded as descriptive of both. At the destruction of Jerusalem, the sign or evidence of his coming was found in the fulfillment of these predictions. At the end of the world, the sign of his coming will be his personal approach with the glory of his Father and the holy angels, 1Th 4:16; Luk 21:27; Mat 26:64; Act 1:11. All the tribes of the earth mourn - That is, either all the “tribes or people” of the land of Judea shall mourn at the great calamities coming upon them, or all the nations of the world shall wail when he comes to judgment. All the wicked shall mourn at the prospect of their doom, Rev 1:7. The cause of their wailing at the day of judgment will be chiefly that they have pierced, killed, rejected the Saviour, and that they deserve the condemnation that is coming upon them, Joh 19:37; Zec 12:12. And they shall see the Son of man - The Lord Jesus coming to judgment. Probably this refers more directly to his coming at the last day, though it may also mean that the “evidence” of his coming to destroy Jerusalem will then be seen. In the clouds of heaven - He ascended in a cloud, Act 1:9. He shall return in like manner, Act 1:11. “The clouds of heaven” denote not the clouds in heaven, but the clouds that appear to shut heaven, or the sky, from our view. With power - Power, manifest in the destruction of Jerusalem, by the wonders that preceded it, and by the overturning of the temple and city. […]