Jesus' Declaration before the High Priest on the Coming of the Son of Man

Jesus' Declaration before the High Priest on the Coming of the Son of Man

Below is the 10th of multiple excerpts of commentary from The Parousia, the late 19th-century masterpiece on the Second Coming by James Stuart Russell. "Our Lord's declaration before the High Priest [Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin]. "Matt. xxvi. 64 [Matt. 26:64] '...Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' "Mark xiv. 62 [Mark 14:62] '...ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.' "Luke xxii. 69 [Luke 22:69] 'Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God.' "The reply of our Saviour to the solemn adjuration of the high priest [Caiaphas] is the almost verbatim repetition of what He had declared to the disciples on the Mount of Olives,--- 'They shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory ' (Matt. xxiv. 30 [Matt. 24:30]). It is evidently [i.e., in an evident manner, thus clearly or obviously] the same event and the same period that are referred to. The language implies that the persons addressed, or some of them [referring to those serving on the Sanhedrin, the Jewish supreme council], would witness the event predicted. The expression 'Ye shall see' would not be proper if spoken of something which the hearers would none of them live to witness, and which would not take place for thousands of years. Our Lord therefore told His judges that they, or some of them, would live to see Him coming to judgment, or coming in His kingdom. This declaration is in harmony with what our Saviour said to His disciples,---'The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels. . . . Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man in his kingdom' (Matt. xvi. 27, 28 [Matt. 16:27-28]). Some of His disciples, and some of His judges, would live long enough to witness that great consummation, less than forty years distant, when the Son of man would come in His kingdom, to execute the judgments of God on the guilty nation [referring to Israel in A.D. 70, when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by the Romans]. This is precisely what the prophecy on the Mount of Olives asserts: 'This generation shall not pass [Matt. 24:34 and parallels],' etc. Here again we have neither obscurity nor ambiguity. But can as much be said for the interpretation which makes our Lord's words refer to a time still future, and an event which has not yet taken place? Can as much be said for the interpretation which finds in this scene, which the Jewish Sanhedri[n] were to witness, no one distinct and particular event, but a prolonged and continuous process, which began at the resurrection of Christ, is still going on, and will continue to go on to the end of the world? "This strange interpretation, which is that of [Johann Peter] Lange and [Henry] Alford, is based partly on the assumption that our Lord's prediction has never yet been fulfilled, and partly on the word 'henceforth' ['hereafter,' Greek: ap arti (Matt. 26:64) or apo tou nun (Luke 22:69), meaning 'from now on'], which is held to indicate a continuous process. But is such an explanation credible, or even conceivable? Is it true that the high priest and the Sanhedri[n] began from that time to see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven? etc. How could such an apparition [appearance] be a continuous process? Plainly, the words can only refer to a definite and specific event; and we can be at no loss to determine what that event is. It can be no other than the Parousia [Second Coming], so often predicted before. That was not a protracted process, but a summary act,--- sudden, swift, conspicuous as the lightning. The sense is well expressed by the editors of the 'Critical English Testament:' 'The meaning [of 'henceforth' or 'hereafter'] cannot be, that immediately after the moment of His answer He should so come, and they so see Him; but rather that He would now depart from them, and that when they next saw Him, after His rejection by them, it would be at His coming in glory, as foretold by the prophet Daniel [Daniel 7:13-14].' "We find, then, in this declaration of our Lord [before the Sanhedrin] an additional confirmation of His previous statements that His coming again [i.e., his coming "a second time," Hebrews 9:28] would take place within the period of the existing generation [Matt. 10:23, Matt. 16:28, Matt. 24:34, Mark 9:1, Mark 13:30, Luke 9:27, Luke 21:32, Rev. 1:7]. Some of His judges, as well as some of His disciples, were to witness it; and there would be no meaning in such an assertion if it did not imply that they were to witness it 'in the flesh.'"

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