Doomsday—Christ tells us to hope for it
In his prophecy, Our Lord seems to tell the Church to look forward to the end of the world as we might look forward to summer.
Doomsday—Part II
In this chapter, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How the signs preceding the end of the world will be terrifying
What it means for us to be watchful and ready
How Christians should feel about the Second Coming of Christ.
Following his prophecies about Jerusalem's doom, Our Lord turns his attention more directly to the end of the world, making startling promises to his faithful.
This Gospel is read on the First Sunday of Advent. Advent is often thought of as the start of the new liturgical year, but as we can see, this Gospel reading flows seamlessly from that of the last Sunday of Pentecost-tide.
This is because Advent itself is not just ordered towards Christmas as the commemoration of Christ’s birth in the flesh, but also towards his Second Coming in Glory.
In this passage, Father Coleridge explains Our Lord words, which tell us to look past the terrifying signs and to fill ourselves with anticipation, hope and excitement for the world that is to come.
We have addressed some of the reasons for this, and how the Roman Liturgy presents this matter, below:
Doomsday for the World
From
Passiontide—Part I
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1889, Ch. XIV, pp 261-71
St. Matt. xxiv. 29–36; St. Mark xiii. 24–34; St. Luke xxi. 25, 26;
Story of the Gospels, § 144, 5.
Sung on the First Sunday of Advent
Signs before the end of the world
The passage which now follows must be certainly considered as having reference to the end of the world. Our Lord has answered the question of His disciples about His coming at the destruction of Jerusalem, and, if the opinion here followed be true, has given the necessary counsels and warnings which may preserve the faithful in the intermediate ages—far longer, as they lay before His eyes, than they were in the opinions of those who lived when He spoke.
Then He proceeds, in a few sentences, to describe the catastrophe of the world.
‘And immediately after the tribulation of those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers that are in heaven shall be moved.
‘There shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves, men withering away for fear, and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world. For the powers of heaven shall be moved.
‘And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty.
‘And He shall send His angels with a trumpet and a great voice, and shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.’
We understand this passage thus. There is to be great tribulation in the days before the end. They are called ‘those days’1—‘those days of which I am thinking,’ and thus are distinguished from the subject of the former words, concerning the destruction of Jerusalem.
After this tribulation, there will be great signs in the physical world, which are mentioned, sun, moon, stars, the earth, the sea. Nothing less will take place than a movement or shaking of the powers of the heavens.
‘Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man,’ which many Fathers understand as the Holy Cross. Then shall follow the Second Advent and the Judgment.
In convulsions of nature
The signs here enumerated are interpreted by some ancient commentators in an allegorical sense, but the majority of the Christian writers take them literally.
Nothing is so appalling to men as an evident change in the natural course of the universe. They are panic-struck in an earthquake or in a terrible storm at sea, for they feel themselves absolutely without help at the mercy of unknown forces from which they cannot fly.
At the end of the world, as seems very probable from the progress of that incomplete and partial knowledge of natural phenomena which goes by the name of science, men will have persuaded themselves to believe in nothing but material forces and the supposed unchangeableness of the laws of nature. It will therefore be a great mercy of God, as well as an act of justice, to warn them by those physical forces of the universe around them in which alone they believe.
Apart from this, when the sun and moon and stars seem to fail men, there is nothing that they can look for but destruction. We are already aware by experience of elements in the physical constitution of things which are sufficient to warn us that these great catastrophes are perfectly possible. Indeed, convulsions of nature have happened in our own time that might prepare us for anything, though they have not seemed to take the particular form of signs in the sun and moon and stars.
The phenomena of which St. Luke speaks, and which are not mentioned by the other Evangelists, ‘the confusion of the roaring of the sea,’ are probably added by him in order to fill up the picture which was incomplete if the signs in heaven alone are considered.
Previous Prophecies
The whole passage is founded upon previous predictions of the ancient prophets relating to the destruction of Babylon and Egypt, the signs here mentioned having been anticipated more or less, at such destructions, which are considered by the prophets as foreshadowings of this.
Isaias says:
‘Behold the day of the Lord shall come, a cruel day and full of indignation and wrath and fury, to lay the land desolate, and to destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and their brightness shall not display their light, the sun shall be darkened in his rising, and the moon shall not shine with her light.’2
Ezechiel says of the destruction of Egypt:
‘I will cover the heavens when thou shalt be put out, and I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light.’3
St. Peter, also, in his first speech on the Day of Pentecost, adopts the language of Joel with regard to the latter day:
‘And I will show wonders in the heavens above, and signs upon the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapour of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and manifest day of the Lord come.’4
Passage in St. Peter
In his last Epistle St. Peter gives his own account of the Last Day to his converts. It is by no means a transcript of earlier prophecies, and goes further than our Lord’s words in this place.
‘Of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord delayeth not His promise, as some imagine, but dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance.
‘But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief—’
(Here St. Peter evidently remembers our Lord’s expression.)
‘—in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works that are in it shall be burned up.
‘Seeing then that all these things are to be destroyed, what manner of people ought you to be in holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of the Lord, by which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with the burning heat?’5
St. Paul on the Man of Sin
This prophecy of St. Peter’s may be considered as adding some lines, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, to the picture already drawn by our Lord for the prophets. In the same way we find St. Paul adding many details to the prophecy as it had been before him, especially with relation to the Man of Sin.6
The Christians to whom St. Paul wrote were very new converts, and it seems wonderful that they should have been so instructed almost at the very outset in these matters, although, what is not surprising, they were imperfect in their knowledge, and St. Paul thought it worth while to write his second Epistle almost for the sole purpose of setting them right.
It is remarkable how our Lord leaves out this part of the picture of the Last Day. He said, indeed, to the Jews, ‘I am come in the name of My Father, and you receive Me not; if another shall come in his own name him you will receive’—words which are understood in the Church as a prophecy of the reception of Antichrist by the Jews.7
But He has left to others to describe the wicked one…
‘… whom the Lord Jesus shall kill with the spirit of His mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming, him whose cunning is according to the working of Satan, in all power and signs and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish, because they received not this love of the truth that they may be saved.’
Lift up your heads
‘But when these things begin to come to pass, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand.’
There are expressions in this part of the prophecy which may seem to refer equally well to either of the two great future events with which the prediction is concerned, that is, either the destruction of Jerusalem, or the coming of our Lord at the end of the world.
In the years that preceded the destruction of the city, the Christians had suffered very much from the persecuting fury of the Jews, and the overthrow of the Jewish polity was really a day of deliverance and redemption to them. They might, therefore, be told to hail the signs which heralded in the calamities of Jerusalem as signs, in that sense, of a welcome breathing-time for themselves.
Again, at the end of the world, there could be no doubt that all the prophetic anticipations concur in describing the Church as suffering more terribly than ever from the persecution of Antichrist, which, it is thought, will be more severe, although shorter, than any former persecution. So it would be in accordance with our Lord’s gentle and loving character to bid the Church in either case take these signs of destruction, either of the city or of the world, as the signs of coming summer.
He is not content with saying that it shall be so. He bids His children lift up their heads, and, not exactly rejoice over the destruction of the enemies of God and of the Church, but give thanks for the approach of what He calls their redemption.
The exhortation may fit either time. Of course, the redemption would be greater—the deliverance from more intolerable evil—and the goods which will then be close at hand far more magnificent as well as eternal, in the latter case than in the former.
Parable of the Fig-tree
If, however, we are to take the sentence before us as an immediate connection with those which it follows, there can be no doubt that it refers to the final deliverance which will be brought about by the Day of Judgment.
And it is in harmony with the tone of feeling with respect to the Last Day, which shows itself in the New Testament, that that Last Day should be commonly looked forward to by Christians with great desire and hope, and a joyful longing and confidence.
This runs through the passages in the Epistles where there is allusion to the end of the world, and where people long with so much joy and hope for any future event, the signs of its approach are hailed with just that kind of feeling which our Lord enjoins. It seems reasonable, then, to understand the passage as having reference to the Last Day of the world.
But there are several intimations in the passage which seem to persuade us to understand the words, at all events, in a secondary sense, of the deliverance which followed on the removal of the Jewish nation.
‘And from the fig-tree learn the parable,’ that is, the parable that the fig-tree has to teach you. ‘When the branch thereof is now tender, and the leaves are come forth, you know that summer is nigh.
‘See the fig-tree and all trees; when they now shoot forth their fruit, you know that summer is nigh. To you also, when you shall see all these things come to pass, know that the Kingdom of God is at hand, know that it is very nigh, even at the doors.’
The parable is very plain, and probably, at the time when our Lord spoke, although we know that the time was not yet come for the figs to be ripe on the trees, yet the slopes of Mount Olivet were clothed with the fresh verdure and foliage of the spring, and summer was near at hand.
It was our Lord’s way, as has often been remarked, to use the scenes before His eyes as the illustration of what He was teaching.
He meant, we may suppose, to carry on the bright hopeful thoughts which He had just put into words, about lifting up their heads, and the rest, and bid them hail the signs which precede, either the chastisement of the nation or the judgment of the world, as the first signs of the early summer are hailed by those who value its gifts. The signs are terrible in themselves, but to Christians they are like the shooting of the fig-tree and all the trees which they see around them.
Words of Our Lord at Samaria
The spirit of our Lord’s language is the same in kind with that which He used in the fields of Samaria. ‘Lift up your eyes, and behold the countries, for they are white already unto harvest.’8
It may be remarked, too, that there seems here a tacit allusion to another fact which it is supposed will mark the Latter Days—that of the conversion of the Jews. For He had spoken some months before this time of the fig-tree, the owner of which had sought figs but in vain for three successive years, and had been persuaded to wait yet a little while longer and give it another chance before it was cut down.
And then, only two days before He had cursed the fig-tree in the valley below because it had no fruit to yield Him, although it was not the time for figs. We have considered that both the parable and the incident of the cursing of the fig-tree refer to the same truth, that of the unfruitfulness of the Synagogue and that of its subsequent barrenness inflicted on it as a punishment.
It had borne no fruit to God, and therefore its power of fruit-bearing was taken away.
Fruitfulness of the fig-tree
And now our Lord tells us something further, that one of the signs of the coming of the end of the world is to be the ‘fruitfulness of the fig-tree,’ that is, the return of the apostate nation to the true faith, and of the ‘fathers to the children, and the incredulous to the wisdom of the just,’ as holy Zachary says, and this to come about just before the end by the preaching of Elias.
If this way of understanding the parable be correct, as it is certainly not objectionable, the choice of the fig-tree here for the illustration in the parable becomes very intelligible. Our Lord, as we have seen, has already shown that He had the future conversion of the chosen people in His Heart, by the words with which He closed the sentence of desolation against the Temple. They were not to see Him again, until the time when they were to say, ‘Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord,’ that is, till they received Him as their Messias.
The fruit-bearing of the fig-tree, if the meaning of the parable, and of the symbolical action by which the tree was cursed, is carried on, means the return of the nation, the fathers to the children, the children to the fathers, and that is to be one sure sign that the Kingdom of God is at hand, and the long battle of the Church on earth is nearly accomplished.
Then, indeed, Christians may lift up their heads, for, as St. Paul says to the Romans, ‘If the loss of them,’ the Jews, ‘be the reconciliation of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?’9
Meaning of ‘this generation’
‘Amen I say to you, that this generation shall not pass till all these things be done. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.’10
These words must be understood according to the principles which have guided us in the whole commentary on the prophecy before us. That is, they are to be understood as being verified with regard to both the great events which are the subject of the prophecy, though, in a less full sense, as to the one than of the other.
The meaning of the phrase ‘this generation’ is twofold.
It may mean the generation to which our Lord spoke, and then they would be verified if, according to the common way of speaking, these great wonders, preceded by their respective signs, came about in the lifetime of the men who were alive when our Lord spoke. In this sense the words refer to the destruction of Jerusalem, and there is no difficulty about taking them in their literal meaning.
In the other sense, they refer to the great catastrophe of the end of the world by the Day of Judgment. In this sense, the words ‘this generation’ must mean this present period of the life of the human race, the last epoch of which is that in which we live, which began at the time of the first coming of our Lord and is to be finished by His second coming. The use of this word in the New Testament seems to show that it seldom has this last signification.
It seems better to understand it in the former sense, and to suppose our Lord to speak of the fulfilment of the signs which shall precede the destruction of Jerusalem before the end of the generation in which He suffered. ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.’
The words seem to signify what is said in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall not pass from the law till all be fulfilled.’11 And in St. Luke: ‘It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.’ That is, certain things may be liable to alteration or postponement in the order of Providence, in our way of understanding, as, for instance, the decree that had been pronounced by Jonas for the destruction of Ninive, or certain promises of God which have been made under a given condition.
But this decree of the destruction of Jerusalem for the sins of the people is a decree which cannot be altered, any more than the fulfilment of the law. Our Lord’s words imply more than this, for they speak positively and are understood as a prophecy, not only of the destruction of Jerusalem or of the end of the world, but also of the new heavens and new earth, which are to succeed, according to the prophecy of Isaias and St. John, and to which St. Peter refers in his Epistle, where, after speaking of the destruction of the world, he says, ‘We look for new heavens and a new earth, according to His promises, in which justice dwelleth.’12
But the direct intention of the passage seems to be to assure the disciples solemnly of the certainty and infallible fulfilment of His words.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, Passiontide—Part I
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Gr. εκεινωυ
Isaias xiii. 9.
Ezechiel xxxii. 7.
It is a mistake to think that St. Peter quotes these verses as having been fulfilled when he spoke—that is, on the Day of Pentecost. He quotes the verses which precede this passage as having been then fulfilled.
‘This is that which was spoken of by the Prophet Joel, And it shall come to pass in the Last Day, saith the Lord, I will pour My spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And upon My servants, indeed, and upon My handmaids will I pour out in those days of My Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders,’ &c.
St. Peter quotes the first verses of the passage as having a fulfilment in what took place on the Day of Pentecost. He completes the quotation, because it is to his purpose to excite compunction in the hearts of his hearers for the murder of our Lord. After speaking of His Resurrection and proving it from Scripture, and also His exaltation to the right hand of God, where he quotes the Psalms which our Lord had put before the Jews in His last question, ‘Sit thou on My right hand till I make thy enemies thy footstool,’ he adds, ‘Therefore let all the house of Israel know most certainly that God hath made both Lord and Christ, this same Jesus Whom you have crucified.’
The burden of his exhortation is summed up at the end, ‘Save yourselves from this perverse generation.’
St. Peter iii. 8-12.
2 Thess. ii. 3.
St. John v. 43.
St. John iv. 36.
Rom. xi. 15
The reader of the original Greek should carefully notice the distinction which seems to be made in the language of this and the closely following passage about the Day of Judgment.
ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ὅτι οὐ μὴ παρέλθῃ ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη ἕως ἂν πάντα ταῦτα γένηται. […] Περὶ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης καὶ ὥρας οὐδεὶς οἶδεν, οὐδὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι τῶν οὐρανῶν οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, εἰ μὴ ὁ πατὴρ μόνος, κ.τ.λ.
St. Matt. v. 18; St. Luke xvi. 17.
2 St. Peter iii. 13.