Introduction
In Luke 17:20 the Pharisees ask Jesus “when the kingdom of God should come”, and receive a somewhat peremptory reply which it is not the purpose of this article to discuss. Jesus uses the occasion to address a discourse to his disciples.
The discourse opens in 17:22 with a reference to the intense longing that would one day be felt by the disciples “to see one of the days of the Son of man”. Jesus is probably foreseeing the distressing days of A.D. 70 when the disciples who were still alive would yearn for the presence of their Lord with his authoritative, miraculous touch (see also 5:35). In ironic contrast to this the discourse closes in 18:8 with the words: “when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”. At the time when Jesus returns to the earth real faith in his coming will be a rare virtue, even among the disciples who are professing faith.
In between these verses we have the discourse of Jesus on the Day of the Son of man.
The suddenness of the return of the Son of man
He begins with a reference in verse 23 to the false Christs that would arise down the ages and lead men astray. The reference in verse 24 to the lightning flash is intended by way of contrast to emphasise the suddenness and unmistakableness of his return; the speed of lightning would have been the fastest speed known in ancient times, almost instantaneous. The power of the presence of Jesus would be felt instantly throughout the There would be no time to apply oneself to the signs of the times, which apparently was the immediate obsession of the Pharisees in their question which prompted the discourse.
The Lord then compares the day of his return with “the days of Noe” (v. 26) and “the days of Lot” (v. 28). In Noah’s days people were obsessed with the routine of earthly concerns, with good food and good living, with profit and loss, with marrying and getting their daughters married. There was no time for God and His prophet Noah, and so life drifted on, secure and satisfying, “until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all” (v. 27). The urbanised society of Sodom and Gomorrah was little different. The people were heedless of any responsibility to God; they were selfishly concerned with their own success and security. “But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all” (v. 29).
The comparison is enforced in verse 30: “Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed”. The Son of man, hitherto unseen, in heaven, will be revealed on earth, which rules out any application of these verses to A.D. 70.
The lesson for our day
We too live in a world in which the business of earthly life is all that matters, when everybody is absorbed in the interests of their own little universe. It is a rat-race in which brethren and sisters may get caught up, in which being “in Christ” can be regarded as signifying merely the having of one’s name on a register.
As with Sodom and Gomorrah, so at Christ’s return the judgement will be by means of fire (2 Pet. 3:7). For example, San Francisco lies on the brink of the San Andreas fault, which may shift geologically at any moment and bring this mighty, wicked city crashing down in ruins, with destruction and death far surpassing that of 1906.
Seismologists predict earthquakes first in California, then in the Mediterranean (see, for example, Nigel Calder’s book The Restless Earth). We must rid our minds of the orthodox Christadelphian view of an earthquake a mere 100 miles long in the Jordan rift valley. Jeremiah 25 says: “a great tempest shall be raised up from the uttermost parts of the earth. And the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth” (vv. 32,33, RV); and: “a noise (of subterranean rumblings) shall come even to the ends of the earth” (v. 31). These words imply a chain reaction of cataclysmic upheavals throughout the world. (Now that gas and oil are being extracted from the North Sea it can be seen that the people of Great Britain are nearer to the subterranean fires of Sodom than they, or even we ourselves, realised.)
By such pent-up forces of nature will God bring down man’s mighty civilisations. “The cities of the nations fell” (Rev. 16:19); God will “destroy them which destroy the earth” (Rev. 11:18).
There is emphasis on the suddenness of the coming destruction. “The same day” is the phrase used in Luke 17:29 of Sodom. Noah and Lot were withdrawn in the nick of time before the convulsions burst upon the unmindful world of their times, and the routine of life was summarily interrupted. The call, as with Noah and Lot, will be strikingly sudden.
The phrase “return back” at the end of verse 31 is an echo of Genesis 19:17, as is emphasised by verse 32: “Remember Lot’s wife”. In that day, “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it” (v. 33). The Lord will send his elect angels with the message: “The Master is come, and calleth for thee” (Jno. 11:28), and we shall be caught away in clouds of glory (1 Thess. 4:17). Will we then look back, and cling in thought to our earthly chattels, on the security we have so laboriously built around ourselves? Our fleeting thoughts in that climactic moment, for which we have so long waited, will coincide with our Lord’s judgement of us, for “as (a man) thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7).
Taken and left
In Luke 17:34-36 there is the threefold reference to some being taken and others left. The Greek word paralambana can, however, mean “to take to oneself”. It is used, for example, of the taking of a wife in Matthew 1:20,24 (compare the English expression, ‘Wilt thou take this woman to be thy lawful wedded wife?’). In John 14:3 it occurs in the words of Christ when he says: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself”.
We suggest therefore that there is more in the word “taken” than the mere carrying off to judgement. It refers to the whole process of being caught away in clouds to rendezvous with the Lord and being accepted by him. Those who are left are those who are rejected by the Lord. In that day the closest of natural ties will be severed.
The question uttered by the disciples, “Where, Lord?”, refers to those who are left. In his answer the Lord says: “Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together” (v. 37). The same phrase occurs in the Mount Olivet Prophecy (Mt. 24:28) in describing the last enemy invasion of the land at the time of the Lord’s return. All invaders of Judah have been eagles and Judah itself is the carcass, both words originating from Deuteronomy 28 (see verses 26 and 49). A tracing of the allusions to Deuteronomy 28 in the later prophets will establish this point with regard to the invasions by Assyria and Babylon, and the application of Deuteronomy 28 to Rome is well known.
Those that are “left”, the rejected ones, will go into “the second death” (Rev. 2:11). This is called in the Gospels “everlasting fire (fire of the age), prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt. 25:41), Gehenna, the place of fiery judgement.
Here the unfaithful meet their end (see also Mt. 5:29,30; 13:40,42; and compare Isa. 66:24). In fact the phrase seems almost to be the uniform expression of the fate of those rejected by Christ. The devil and his angels stand for the leader of the invading power and his generals.
The conclusion which comes from this is that the rejected will be caught up in the scenes of death and destruction in the land of Israel brought about by the Gogian invasion, and that the judgement must therefore precede the invasion. It might be argued that Luke 17 contains no reference to judgement. Neither, however, do the 58 verses of 1 Corinthians 15. An argument from silence carries no weight in these circumstances when it is well established from other passages that judgement is involved.
The parable of the Unjust Judge
The source of this parable is Isaiah 62:6,7, which is transferred by Jesus into the form of a parable, perhaps with reference to a recent local incident as described. Note the verbal correspondence:
“His own elect, which cry day and night unto Him” (Lk. 18:7);
“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give Him no rest” (Isa. 62:6,7).
“Give Him no rest” could well serve as the caption for this parable.
The object of the parable is “that men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (18:1). Clearly, in the light of the Isaiah source passage it is prayer for the Kingdom of God that is being urged, and this takes us back to the beginning of the passage expounded in this article, where the Pharisees ask when the Kingdom will come. The inner direction of a disciple’s life must always be towards the coming again of Christ.
At verse 1 of Isaiah 62 one person has already been praying, and would not “hold (his) peace” nor “rest”, “for Jerusalem’s sake”. Hymn 249 has decisively, but quite incorrectly, identified this person:
“For Zion’s sake I will not rest,
Saith God, nor hold my peace
Until Jerusalem be blest,
And Judah’s sorrows cease”.
Scrutiny of the text, forgetting about the chapter division, clearly indicates that the speaker is the one clothed by God “with the garments of salvation” and the “robe of righteousness” (61:10). This is Christ, who, in the beautiful symbolism of the Apocalypse, adds “much incense” to “the prayers of all saints” (Rev. 8:3). He it is who in the parable instructs the watchmen, “the Lord’s remembrancers” (62:6, RV), to pray incessantly for the Kingdom. Yet, although in the parable the woman’s persistence was unflagging, the implication of the whole passage is that the prayers of those contemporary with the Lord’s coming will diminish in urgency as the day approaches.
The foregoing is forcibly embodied in Christ’s parable by a contrasting picture from which he draws the lesson: “And shall not God avenge His own elect, although He long defer His sympathy with them?”.’ In his reply Christ assures us that “He will avenge them speedily”, that is, as He did in the two instances cited in chapter 17: the Flood, and the judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet, “because iniquity shall abound, the love of the many (RV) shall wax cold” (Mt. 24:12).
Reference
- P. 264, Goebbels, The Parables of Jesus, T. & T. Clark, 1883.
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