Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/216

 last judgment and the second coming of the Lord, are spoken of in the Scriptures as coeval events. They are referred to in several places in the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Revelation; but in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, they are treated of at greater length and with more discrimination and detail than in any other portions of the Divine Word. That wonderful narrative was delivered by the Lord to His disciples upon the mount of Olives. He having said unto them concerning the temple, "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down," "they came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?" It is to be observed that the inquiry was made "privately," and that the answer was given to the disciples only. These were remarkable occurrences, intended to suggest that the information involved in the discourse did not so much belong to the outer publicity of the world, as to the inner experience of the Church. The prediction about the temple, and the inquiry respecting its fulfilment, are the key to the whole subject. The temple, it is well known, was a type of the Church, and doubtless its destruction by the enemies of the religion which it represented, was a symbol of the ruin which would be brought upon the Church by a perversion of its principles. However much, therefore, the Lord's discourse may seem to treat of the calamities which were about to overtake Jerusalem, there lay behind the whole narrative a distinct reference to some other disasters, by which the Church was to be destroyed. That was the primary subject respecting which the Lord intended to speak; the other was simply