The Second Coming in the Gospel of John [continued]

The Second Coming in the Gospel of John [continued]

Below is the 13th of multiple excerpts of commentary from Parts I and II of The Parousia, the late 19th-century masterpiece on the Second Coming by James Stuart Russell. The initial 31 posts on this blog deal with the Book of Revelation, which is cogently interpreted in Part III of Russell's magnum opus. (For all blog posts, see russellparousia.blogspot.com) "The Resurrection, the Judgment, and the Last Day. "JOHN vi. [6] 39.--- 'This is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.'

"JOHN vi. [6] 40.---'I will raise him up at the last day.' "JOHN vi. [6] 44.---'I will raise him up at the last day.' "JOHN [xi] [11] 24.---'He shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.' "JOHN xii. [12] 48.---'The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.' "We have in these passages another new phrase in connexion with the approaching consummation, which is peculiar to the Fourth Gospel. We never find in the Synoptics [Matthew, Mark, Luke] the expression 'the last day,' although we do find its equivalents, 'that day,' and 'the day of judgment.' It cannot be doubted that these expressions are synonymous, and refer to the same period. But we have already seen that the judgment with the 'end of the age ' ([Greek:] sunteleia tou aionos), and we infer that 'the last day' is only another form of the expression 'the end of the [Old Covenant] age or aeon.' The Parousia [Second Coming] also is constantly represented as coincident in point of time with the 'end of the age,' so that all these great events, the Parousia, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment, and the last day, are contemporaneous. Since, then, the end of the age is not, as is generally imagined, the end of the world, or total destruction of the earth, but the close of the Jewish economy; and since our Lord Himself distinctly and frequently places that event within the limits of the existing generation [Matt. 10:23, 16:28, 23:36, 24:34, 26:64; Mark 9:1, 13:30, 14:62; Luke 9:27, 21:32, 22:69; Rev. 1:7], we conclude that the Parousia the resurrection, the judgment, and the last day, all belong to the period of the destruction of Jerusalem [in A.D. 70]. "However startling or incredible such a conclusion may at first sight appear, it is what the teachings of the New Testament are absolutely committed to, and as we advance in this inquiry, we shall find the evidence in support of it accumulating to such a degree as to be irresistible. We shall meet with such expressions as ' the last times,' 'the last days,' and 'the last hour,' evidently denoting the same period as the last day,'---yet spoken of as being not far off, and even as already come. Meanwhile we can only ask the reader to reserve his judgment, and calmly and impartially to weigh the evidence, derived, not from human authority, but from the word of inspiration itself."