“Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many. Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For false Christs and false prophets shall rise and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. Go not after them, nor follow them.”
But although they are to flee from the frauds of the false Messiahs, they cannot escape the persecutions of the enemies of the real Christ. “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. . . . Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and the children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death. . . . And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another . . . and because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved.”
Then shall begin the signs of the imminent punishment, “And when ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrow.”
These are the preliminary warnings: the order of the world shall be disturbed, the world, peaceful at the time when Christ pronounced these words, shall see man set against man, nation against nation, and the earth itself soaked with blood shall rise against men; shall tremble under their steps; shall cast down their houses; shall vomit out ashes, as if it cast out from the mouth of its mountains all its dead, and shall deny to the fratricides the food which ripens to gold every summer in the fields.
Then when all this shall have come to pass, the punishment will come upon those people who would not be born again in Christ, who did not accept the Gospel; on the city which nailed its Lord upon Golgotha and persecuted His witnesses.
“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel, the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judea flee to the mountains: and let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take anything out of his house: And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment. But woe to them that are with child, and to them who give suck in those days! And pray ye that your flight be not in winter. For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be. There shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”
This is the end of the first prophecy. Jerusalem shall be taken and destroyed and of the Temple, defiled by the abomination of desolation, there shall remain not one stone upon another.
But Jesus has not said all, until now has not spoken of His second coming.
“Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” What are these “tempi dei Gentili, tempora nationum”? The words of the Greek texts express it with greater precision than the other languages: they are the times adapted to, fitting, and awaiting the Gentiles, that is, those in which the non-Jews shall be converted to the Gospel, announced to the Jews before all others. Therefore that real end shall not come until the Gospel has been carried into all nations, until the Gentiles, the faithless ones, tread down the city of Jerusalem. “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”
The second coming of Christ from Heaven, the Parusia, will be the end of this world and the beginning of the true world, the eternal kingdom. The end of Judea was announced by signs human and terrestrial; this other end will be preceded by signs divine and celestial. “The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light. And the stars of heaven shall fall. And upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after these things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”