The Sign of the Son of Man

Three Questions 

In Matthew 24 the disciples ask Jesus about things to come. Specifically, having heard Jesus’ pronouncement of doom upon the Jerusalem temple (v.2), they inquire as to when this event will occur and what will be the sign of the end of the age (v.3). Their question seems to assume that these events are to be contemporaneous, but Jesus’ reply clearly separates them as distinct occurrences (Luke’s version, in chapter 21 of his Gospel, makes this point even clearer and more emphatically). Their generation shall indeed see the fall of Jerusalem (v.34) and the many signs preceding and accompanying that holocaust (vv. 4-8, 15- 26), but the time of the end is known only to the Father (v. 36). When Jerusalem is destroyed, they are not to assume that this means the end is near. Indeed, if anything, conditions at the time of the Second Coming will be normal and ordinary, not tumultuous or especially disruptive of the routines and customs of daily life (vv.38-44). The only sign of the end, beyond those general signs of travail which more or less mark the entire age from beginning to end (vv.6-8), is the successful preaching of the gospel to all the world (v.14). Many erroneously assume that the Olivet Discourse refers almost exclusively to the end-times, to events that for us yet lie in the future (futurism) . Others believe that it refers wholly to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, to events that were long ago fulfilled (preterism). Over against any attempt to make all either past or future, we must understand Christ’s discourse to answer the three questions asked of him. Whether the inquisitive disciples understood these to be truly distinct questions, or no (and it seems clear that they believed all three questions to refer to the same set of events, connected events occurring together within a brief time-frame), it remains true that the set of questions may in fact refer to distinct events, events neither causally connected nor contemporaneous. Two or three altogether distinct events may be involved, despite the assumptions of the inquirers, and these events may be separated by millennia. We know that the Second Coming and the end of the age belong together, but the destruction of the Temple (“these things” in v.3, referring to the antecedent assertion by Jesus in vv.1-2) occurred in A.D. 70, and we do not need to project yet another Temple and its razing into the future in a case of what Jay Adams calls “eschatological diplopia.”1 This is a judgment upon this generation of Jesus’ contemporaries (Mt. 23-29-36), the sign of unbelieving Israel’s reprobation.

Preteristic Mistakes

However, it is equally wrong to force Jesus’ coming and the end of the age into an exclusively preterist framework so that all reference here to the coming of the Son of Man is taken to refer, not to the Second Advent, but merely to a coming in judgment against Jerusalem during the Jewish Wars of 66-70, and the end of the age is understood as the end of the Old-Covenant order (the last days of Israel). The end of the age ought to be understood here with the same meaning as in 28:20—the termination of the inter-advental period, marked by the future, personal and visible return of Christ in bodily form at the end of history. Christ speaks of both proximate and remote events that he warns his disciples not to confuse.

The consistent preterists read v. 34 and mistakenly assume that everything said up to this point (the entire discourse through v.33)—including, e.g., v. 27—must be comprehended in the fulfillment of “these things” which occurs within “this generation.” Yet we need not read the discourse in such a manner. Obviously, all that has been said up to v.14 is said as sort of a preliminary survey or overview of the entire inter-advental age, providing in broad strokes (general patterns) a panoramic vision of what will occur before Christ returns in glory. Beginning with v. 15 we recapitulate to a more detailed exposition of specific events within the time-frame, and here (vv.15-26) the focus is clearly upon the answer to the disciples’ first question concerning the destruction of the Temple. V. 27 is parenthetical, an aside interrupting the flow of thought regarding the tribulation of those days. Since in the midst of the calamities accompanying the judgment upon Jerusalem, many false prophets and messianic pretenders will arise (Zealots leading the Jewish revolt against Rome), Christ, by way of contrast with these false messiahs assembling armies in the desert regions, pauses at this point to interject into the discourse what his coming will be like. Accordingly, this tangential clarification about the return of Christ does not fall within the temporal sequence of events that is the subject of this portion of the discourse and is not intended to be included as part of the narration of “these things”—a prophecy concerning Jerusalem’s imminent fate. (Again, Luke’s version of this discourse in Lk. 21:8ff is composed in such a way as to make the distinction between the judgment upon Jerusalem and the end-time even clearer.) The coming of Christ does not accompany the fall of Jerusalem or immediately follow it, and Christians must not be discouraged and lose faith by the mistaken notion that it was supposed to do so, as some may have erroneously inferred from Mark 13.

Thus, when Christ, in v.29, resumes the narration of the holocaust that is to befall this generation, the “immediately after” passes over v.27, referring to the tribulations of the ill-fated Jewish War that results in the Romans’ destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. The apocalyptic imagery employed in v.29 indeed refers, as the preterists rightly insist, to historical judgment upon Israel. It is the language of divine judgment and need not be construed as referring to the end-time, for it is language used by OT prophets to refer to judgments God rendered in history against enemies of the people of God (Edom, Egypt, Babylon) in former times.3 By this language the destruction of Jerusalem is shown to be a divine act of judgment that treats apostate Israel as the enemy of God’s New-Covenant people. Jerusalem, as Revelation informs us, is now as Sodom and Egypt (Rev. 11:8), and her demise is not to be regarded by Christ’s disciples as a disaster or calamity (as the Synagogue saw it), but as a sign the Christ now reigns and visits judgment upon his enemies.

What is the Sign?

It is after this exercise of judgment that the sign of the Son of Man in heaven is truly manifest.4 This does not refer to a sign appearing in heaven (e.g., something like Constantine’s seeing a Cross in the sky), far less is it a visible appearing of the Son of Man himself, returning personally in glory. This is rather the sign that the Son of Man is enthroned in heaven as King of kings and Lord of lords, reigning in power at the right hand of God and exerting his will on earth (cf. Mt. 26:64). The tribes of the land—the people of Israel—mourn at this manifestation of the power and glory of the Son of Man, who has come ( in ascension) in the clouds of heaven unto the Ancient of Days to receive the Kingdom. They who could not discern the signs of the times had perversely sought from Jesus a sign (Mt. 12:39; 16:1-4; cf. 1 Cor. 1:22; fn. 6:30) and were given the sign of Jonah.

In the double tradition of this dominical saying concerning the sign of Jonah (clearer from Luke’s account—Lk. 11:29-32) the sign refers primarily to Gentiles repenting and thus being saved from impending judgment. Ninevah represents a Gentile people who turned to the LORD and became God-fearers in the time of Israel’s apostasy. Gentile response to the preaching of the Kingdom will thus bear witness against this generation, condemning Israel’s unbelief. The Gentilization of the Kingdom will be a sign of judgment to Israel, signifying Israel’s loss of the Kingdom-inheritance, her supersession by a “nation” bearing the fruits of repentance (cf. Mt. 8:11-12; 22:43).

In a move which might at first appear only to obscure the reference to Gentile response, Matthew redactively interjects into the exposition of the sign of Jonah, as a part of its meaning, a prediction of the Resurrection. This is done because it is, in Matthew’s view of redemptive-history, only after the Resurrection that the disciples are commissioned by the Risen Christ to go to the nations (28:18-20). During the earthly ministry they are restricted in ministry to the house of Israel (/(9.-56). The Resurrection is thus viewed by Matthew as the sign of a pivotal redemptive-historical change that opens the Kingdom to the Gentiles. It is the Son of Man who was, like Jonah, three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and the Risen Christ—the one to whom all is given authority in heaven and earth—is the glorified Danielic Son of Man who has received from the Ancient of Days dominion, and glory, and a Kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him.

Moreover, the Resurrection is crucial to understanding the sign of Jonah as a witness against the Pharisees. It is this sign of the Resurrection which the Pharisees (the synagogues of Rabbinic Judaism) blaspheme (a blasphemy of the Spirit) as they label Jesus a sorcerer and deceiver who led Israel astray by casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub (Mt. 12:24). The Pharisees (and their post- Jamnian heirs) blaspheme against the Spirit as they claim that the Resurrection is a hoax perpetrated by the disciples’ theft of Jesus’ body (Mt. 28:11-15). By slandering the church, the Pharisees and the later Synagogue refuse to acknowledge the significance of the Gentiles’ entry into the Messianic ekklesia that heralds the eschaton as the sign of the last days when the nations would flock to Zion and join themselves to Israel’s God. The Synagogue of the Jews blasphemes against the work of the Spirit—the church as the community assembled and commissioned by the Risen Christ—by their Benediction Against Heretics, gainsaying that which the church confesses and proclaims and attributing its fruit to Satan (Mt. 10:25). The gospel of the Kingdom preached to all the world is a witness preceding the end and is, with judgment upon Jerusalem, part of the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, a demonstration that Jesus is risen and is applying his eschatological resurrection-power. Stated another way, the sign of the Son of Man in heaven, and all the signs of the times, were part of this sign of Jonah the prophet according to Matthew’s interpretation. The sign of the Son of Man, of his receiving his Kingdom from the Father, is the preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom throughout the world (referring back to v.14).The Kingdom has been taken away from Israel and is now given to others, fulfilling the sign of Jonah to this generation. The efficacy of the preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom to the nations, the fruit of this endeavor (marked by its result in repentance by the receptive nations), manifests that Jesus has risen, is indeed Lord and Christ, and has been given the nations as his messianic inheritance, for all peoples, nations, and languages shall serve the Son of Man. His manifest dominion—the triumph of grace—is the sign of the end.

The Disinheritance of The Faithless Jews

The sign of the Son of Man, the sign that he reigns in heaven over all the earth, is thus the disinheritance of the unbelieving nation and the giving of the Kingdom to the Gentiles, and this was clearly manifest by the events of A.D.70 and the redirected mission-trajectory of the church that follows this outpouring of the filled cup of wrath upon an evil and adulterous generation which sought such signs. Yet the sign of the Son of Man is especially the sign of his coming (v. 3). This is not simply the beginning of Gentile-mission as the main thrust of the church’s activity (a decisive break with Judaism and the Synagogue) whereby the makeup of the Church becomes predominantly (almost exclusively) Gentile.5 It bespeaks a saturation of the globe, penetrating and permeating every corner with the gospel. It refers to a disciplining of the nations. The Son sends his messengers forth to gather his elect from one end of heaven to the other, bringing great multitudes from the east and the west—from the four winds—to sit at his table in the Kingdom. Only after the gospel has gone out to all the world and has borne fruit can the end come. The sign of the Son of Man is the power—the success—of the gospel that proclaims his Kingdom. It is the sign of victory.

1. The Time is at Hand (n.p., 1970), 17-40. Adams’ term is actually “premillennial diplopia,” but the point of his criticism is applicable to any form of futuristic tribulationalism.

2. See John Murray, “The Interadvental Period and the Advent: Matthew 24 and 25,” Collected Writings of John Murray: Systematic Theology (Carlysle, PA, 1977), 2.388.

3. See further David Chilton, The Great Tribulation (Fort Worth, TX, 1987), 18-20.

4. Up to v. 29 William R. Kimball’s exposition, in his What the Bible Says About the Great Tribulation (Phillipsburg, NJ, 1983) is generally excellent, providing a balance between the excesses of consistent preterists (like Chilton) and futurists. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (“Theonomy and Eschatology: Reflections on Postmillennialism,” in William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey, eds., Theonomy: A Reformed Critique [Grand Rapids, MI, 1991], 197-224) justly criticizes Chilton’s approach as focusing too much upon the fulfillment of virtually everything in A.D. 70 to the virtual neglect of the Second Coming. However, Gaffin chooses to follow Murray’s exegesis (see n. 2 above), and Murray—like Kimball—does not, in my opinion, take seriously enough the force of “immediately after” in v. 29 (or, in Murray’s case, the antecedent referent of “the tribulation of those days” in v. 29, referring back to vv. 15-22—the time of Jerusalem’s destruction by Rome). Murray, ignoring these contextual indicators, makes an illegitimate appeal to Lk 21:24, importing a non-Matthean detail into the Matthean sequence in order to extend the time-frame to the “times of the Gentiles” and so rob the “immediately ‘ of its force as something coming right upon the heels (shortly after) the fall of Jerusalem. If we take v. 29 seriously, we have to assign this sign to the first century as something that has occurred or that was definitively commenced then and is still in the process of a progressive realization.

5. Of course, Paul and others had begun Gentile-mission long before the fall of Jerusalem, maintaining that the obedience of the Gentiles was a sign to Israel. However, large quarters of the Christian Church remained devoted to a mission to Israel and the Diaspora Jews. Indeed, before the outcome of the Jewish Wars, the Jewish-Christians probably outnumbered Gentile-Christians. Only after A.D. 70 did the mainstream of Christianity throw itself fully into Gentile-mission and did the Gentiles become the overwhelming majority in the church. Christianity was manifested not as a mere sect of Judaism, and the church and Synagogue were definitively divorced from each other. God’s judgment upon Jerusalem was the sign that Israel’s former status as the people of God had been superseded by the church, whose claims concerning Jesus were demonstrably vindicated.