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 inquiry regarding the time of the destruction of the temple then visibly before them. If the Lord, in His answer to this question, by making mention of the βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρ. ἑστὼς ἐν τόπῳ ἁγίω, had no thought of this temple, but only of the τόπος ἅγιος of the future, the temple of the Christian church, then by the use of words which the disciples could not otherwise understand than of the laying waste and the desolation of the earthly sanctuary He would have confirmed them in their error. The second conclusion is out of harmony with the whole course of thought in the discourse. Besides, both of them are decidedly opposed by this, that the Lord, after setting forth all the events which precede and open the way for His παρουσία and the end of the world, says to the disciples, “When ye see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors” (Mat 24:33), and solemnly adds, “This γενεά,” i.e., the generation then living, “shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled” (Mat 24:34). Since the πάντα ταῦτα in Mat 24:33 comprehends all that goes before the παρουσία, all the events mentioned in Mat 24:15-28, or rather in Matt 24:5-28, it must be taken also in the same sense in Mat 24:34. If, therefore, the contemporaries of Jesus and His disciples - for we can understand nothing else by ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη - must live to see all these events, then must they have had a commencement before the destruction of Jerusalem, and though not perfectly, yet in the small beginnings, which like a germ comprehended in them the completion. Hence it is beyond a doubt that the Lord speaks of the judgment upon Jerusalem and the Jewish temple as the beginning of His παρουσία and of the συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος, not merely as a pre-intimation of them, but as an actual commencement of His coming to judgment, which continues during the centuries of the spread of the gospel over the earth; and when the gospel shall be preached to all nations, then the season and the hour kept in His own power by the Father shall reach its completion in the  ἐπιφανείᾳ τῆς παρουσίας αὐτοῦ (2Th 2:8) to judge the world. According