MATTHEW CHAPTER 24

Hugo McCord

I am glad that my salvation does not depend on a complete understanding of Matthew chapter 24. But a lack of a complete understanding does not blind me to the fact that prominent teachers misuse the chapter, claiming that it gives signs of the Lord’s imminent (“impending,” Billy Graham) return.

In addition, some learned gospel preachers err in eliminating the second coming of Christ from verses 27-33. They deny that the disciples asked Jesus about the “‘end of the world’ as we think of it.” They claim that the Greek word aion (v. 3) is “more precisely” translated “age” instead of “world,” and so they have the disciples’ inquiring of Jesus what is “the sign of your coming, and of the end of the [Jewish] age?”

True, at times the word aion is accurately translated “age,” but of the 127 occurrences of the word in the New Testament, it never means “the Jewish age” that terminated in 70 A.D. Jesus had used the word aion several times to his disciples:

... it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this

world [aion], nor in that which is to come (12:32); the care of the world [aion] (13:22); the harvest is the end of the world [aion] (13:39); the tares are gathered up and burned with fire; so shall it be in the end of the world [aion] (13:40); so shall it be in the end of the world [aion] (13:49, ASV).

Clear it is, therefore, that Jesus did not use the word aion to refer to the end of the age of God’s dealings with the Jews as his chosen people in 70 A.D., but always to the end of world as we think of it. Jesus promised to be with his disciples “always,” not merely to the end of Judaism in 70 A.D., but “even unto the end of the world [aion]” (Matthew 28:20, ASV).

When the disciples heard Jesus say that one stone would not be left on another in Jerusalem, they asked him,

Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world [aion]? (Matthew 24:3, ASV).

Since they had heard him speak of end of the world [aion] as the time when the tares would be “burned with fire” (Matthew 13:40), and as the time when the angels will “sever the wicked from among the righteous” (Matthew 13:49), apparently their latter two questions were one question: “what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world [aion]?”