Matthew 24
23 Mark 13:21; Luke 17:23.
24 They would deceive, if possible, the very elect - But it is not possible
that God should suffer the body of Christians to be thus deceived.
27 For as the lightning goeth forth - For the next coming of Christ
will he as quick as lightning; so that there will not be time for any such
previous warning.
28 For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles he gathered
together - Our Lord gives this, as a farther reason, why they should not
hearken to any pretended deliverer. As if he had said, Expect not any deliverer
of the Jewish nation; for it is devoted to destruction. It is already before
God a dead carcass, which the Roman eagles will soon devour. Luke 17:37.
29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days - Here our Lord begins
to speak of his last coming. But he speaks not so much in the language
of man as of God, with whom a thousand years are as one day, one moment.
Many of the primitive Christians not observing this, thought he would come
immediately, in the common sense of the word: a mistake which St. Paul
labours to remove, in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. The powers
of the heavens - Probably the influences of the heavenly bodies. Mark 13:24;
Luke 21:25.
30 Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven - It seems
a little before he himself descends. The sun, moon, and stars being extinguished,
(probably not those of our system only,) the sign of the Son of man (perhaps
the cross) will appear in the glory of the Lord.
31 They shall gather together his elect - That is, all that have endured
to the end in the faith which worketh by love.