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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The coming of Judgment Day:
v. 24. But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,
v. 25. and the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.
v. 26. And then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.
v. 27. And then shall He send His angels, and shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.
The evangelist's account is only a brief summary of the words of the Lord, but what depth of emotion is in the few words thus recorded! As Jesus looks forward, according to His omniscience, the earlier calamity will merge into the later, the judgment upon Jerusalem is carried out only on a greater scale in the final judgment of the world. There will be no interval of a happy, sinless reign, no millennium. With no respite and without extensive previous warning the Day of the Lord will dawn, it will burst upon the world with great suddenness. Then there will be signs such as are entirely out of the usual course of events in nature; no ordinary eclipses which follow laws and rules framed by God, but a return to chaos. The sun will be darkened; the moon will lose her splendor; the stars will no longer be able to hold the position which was given them by the Creator, but will fall from heaven. There will be a great concussion of the powers of the heavens. The entire universe will go out of joint. The hand of God's providence and government will be withdrawn, and all will be dissolved into its component parts. And then, when the world is falling to pieces and the heavens are being rolled up like a curtain, then they, the people of the earth, will see the Son of Man, the divine-human Savior of mankind, that came into the world for them all, but was received by so few, coming in the clouds. Like a mighty conqueror riding in his chariot of triumph, the former despised Nazarene will appear, with great power and glory. According to His human nature, He has now assumed the full divine glory and majesty, and now returns as the Judge of the living and the dead. In the fullness of this majesty He will command His angels to go forth and to bring together to Him the elect, from the four winds, from every part of the earth, as far as the world extends, wherever human beings have penetrated. Not the slightest shred of the former lowliness and weakness is evident in this glorious picture, it is the great; the almighty Lord of the universe that is here holding the great harvest of the last day.