We’re still in the nineteenth century:

“…to what extent persecutions of believers to the death will be repeated when the advent of the Lord draws near, time must teach. The possibility of such things, at least, is proved by the persecutions of the faithful at the hands of their sanguinary oppressors during the time of the first French Revolution.”

Calling it the “first” French Revolution is interesting. This passage was published in 1860, so perhaps he was thinking of the time of Bonaparte and the War of 1812 as a kind of second French Revolution. “Sanguinary oppressors” is interesting too. The stories of that revolution are very, very bloody; it was a far worse time than the American revolutionary period.

“Ver. 10-13.— The sad consequences of these persecutions, to the Church, are now minutely described. To many they will prove a stumbling-block, and will lead them into great delinquencies. False teachers will arise, who will seduce many from the Church, and the ardor of brotherly love will be extinguished. The exhortation to… persevering endurance in all these sufferings, suggested by these thoughts, is expressed in ver. 13; affliction is represented as that which purifies and perfects, so that it is equally a means of separating the impure, and of transforming into complete salvation the life of the upright. 

“That the teachers of error here spoken of (ver. 11) would be in the bosom of the Church, is not expressly stated; and it may be supposed that teachers not belonging to the Church will succeed in drawing many feeble and half-hearted members out of it, for fear of persecutions; just as the growing iniquity without the Church acts banefully upon the love in the Church itself (ver. 12). But, as it is not expressly said that they will be without the Church, the words may be taken indefinitely as we find them, and applied to both cases; so that the general meaning is, that sin and corruption will gain greater power through the persecutions that should result from them, and will wound the Church itself in many of its members. (Psucho, to grow cold, occurs no where else in the New Testament; it is derived from the metaphor which compares love to a fire, Luke xii. 49.)”

“I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?      
(Luke 12:49; KJV)

THAYER’S GREEK-ENGLISH LEXICON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT says that psucho (Strong’s #5594) means “to breathe, blow, cool by blowing; passive: to be made or to grow cool or cold; trop. of waning love, Mt. xxiv.12.” My KEY WORD BIBLE adds: “It is from this verb that psuche (5590) soul, is derived. Hence psyche is the breath of a living creature, animal life, and psucho in the passive voice. Psuchomai, means to cool, to grow cool or cold in a spiritual sense, as in Christian love (Mt. 24:12).” 

It took some doing to figure out what “trop.” referred to in “trop. of waning love.” I finally found it at latin-dictionary.net/search/latin/trop , the second suggestion under the third definition: “trope, figure of speech, figurative use of word.” So, in this case, it’s a Latin word used to describe how the Greek word is being used. That’s pretty funny.

As to content: at last someone is stepping back from preconceived notions and seeing the bigger picture here.

“The probability that such phenomena as those described, ver. 10-12, were to precede the destruction of Jerusalem, cannot be shewn; the persecutions of that period were not so violent as to drive many away from the faith and from the first glow of love. If anything of the kind did take place, it was only a feeble type of the decline of the Church predicted here, which Paul (2 Thess. ii. 3) designates as the “falling away’. 

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition     
(2 Thessalonians 2:3; KJV)

“And another proof that this prophecy also will find its fulfillment, in far more fearful phenomena than those which preceded the fall of Jerusalem, is furnished by the terrible fact of the first French Revolution — when the Christian religion was formally abolished, and compelled to give place to the idolatrous worship of reason.”

There are/were many who have said that Napoleon was an antichrist. They usually list Alexander, Napoleon, and Hitler as the antichrists of history. I think it’s safe to say that there have been far more men overcome by the spirit of antichrist in history. 

The French Revolution was from 1789 to 1799; yet this is the first nineteenth century writer to mention it. I would think that the people of that time would have been wondering if they were in the end times…especially when Napoleon, First Consul of the New French Republic, started the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) less than 5 years after the revolution had died down (which he also played a role in).

“Ver. 14. — The proclamation of the Gospel in the world, and its vast extension to all the nations of the earth, forms, in the discourse of the Lord, the contrast to the apostasy of many from the Church in consequence of persecutions and seductions. In this extension, the Divine energy inherent in the word is manifested as infinitely more mighty than all the power by which the Church is assaulted from without. (The expression…Gospel of the kingdom, in Matthew specifies the kingdom as the object of the glad tidings proclaimed by the preachers; that message, however, is to be viewed as combining both the external and internal; only, that here the connexion [sic] naturally leads to this, viz., that the proclamation would invite men to receive the spirit of the new living community, so that, at the Parousia, when it shall appear in ascendancy, they may be received into it.)

“Now, this verse is particularly opposed to that view which refers the whole of this portion of the discourse (as far as ver. 29) to the destruction of Jerusalem alone. For the parallel all nations, prohibits us from applying world, either to the Jewish state or to the Roman empire; nor can those who support the above hypothesis allow that there was a proclamation of the Gospel in all the world before the destruction of Jerusalem; while the explanation that the announcement was not made to nations, as such, but to individuals belonging to them, who, it may be, came in contact with the apostles (so that the sense would be: ‘the proclamation shall not then be confined to Jews, but addressed to members of all nations’), is evidently the mere resort of necessity. According to our fundamental view, the preaching of the Gospel in all the world (as the prophets so often declared that the word of God should come to the remotest isles) is a true sign of the near approach of the Lords advent, only that here — like the whole description — it leans upon a great historical event which forms the natural type of the final catastrophe. Hence it is here said (with a retrospective reference to ver. 6)…then shall the end come, so that the end of the…present age, is clearly connected with this sublime triumph of the Divine word over all ungodliness. At the same time, the language before us does not imply that every member of every nation will be converted to the Church of Christ, as is shewn by the words ‘for a testimony to all nations’.… (The same phraseology occurred Mark xiii.9; Luke xxi. 12, in reference to persecutions.)”

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.  
(Mark 13:9; KJV)

But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake.    
(Luke 21:12; KJV)

Good arguments against seeing these phrases in Matthew as meaning that the word would go out to ‘all the Roman Empire.’ I don’t agree that “for a testimony to all nations” means “that every member of every nation will be converted to the Church of Christ” though. This thought makes me wonder about this author; there are those who believe that the end won’t come until we have converted the whole world, and these are usually amillennialists. This interpretation is not particularly Biblical: At least it doesn’t follow Revelation at all.

“All that is required is that the Gospel, as the purest light of the manifestation of God, be shewn to all; thus every one is placed under the necessity of deciding and taking part either for or against it. Hence the proclamation of the kingdom of God is itself a deciding time… for the nations, whereby those who are of an ungodly mind are made manifest; and this is the precise point expressed in the phrase ‘for a testimony to them.’ In the representation of Luke (which here begins to differ widely from Matthew), this idea is wanting; and, instead of it, he has introduced into this discourse the thoughts omitted by Matthew respecting the support that would be rendered to the preachers of the Gospel by the Holy Spirit; Mark also refers to the same subject, and connects it immediately with the proclamation of the Gospel. Matthew has the words (x. 19,20), in his account of the instructions to the apostles; 

But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.  
(Matthew 10:19-20; KJV)

“and although they are by no means unsuitable in that connexion, yet it must be confessed that the last addresses of Christ, like the great concluding discourses reported by John, afford us reason for considering it very probable that the Lord then made reference to the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, it appears that Mark and Luke have preserved, in these passages, true elements of the discourse of Christ, which Matthew omitted here because he had introduced them into previous discourses.”     [from  NEW TESTAMENT COMMENTARY, VOL 2, LUKE, JOHN, by Hermann Olshausen, 1860)    

I am impressed with the insight of this commentary. I’d never heard of Olshausen before finding his books on Internet Archive. Olshausen, as his name suggests, was German, but his NEW TESTAMENT COMMENTARY of 6 volumes was translated into English fairly early on. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do the whole New Testament, and Revelation is one of the books left out.

I’m skipping over some of the nineteenth century authors as they are saying the same old things: that the time being described by Matthew here is the first century and the events of 70 AD. 

While this last quote is from the nineteenth century still, it’s from Charles Spurgeon, and this man definitely thought about things in depth

“9. 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. Our Lord not only foretold the general trial that would come upon the Jews and upon the world, but also the special persecution which would be the portion of His chosen followers, ‘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.’ The New Testament gives abundant proof of the fulfillment of these words. Even in Paul’s day, ‘this sect’ was ‘everywhere spoken against.’ Since then, has there been any land unstained by the blood of the martyrs? Wherever Christ’s Gospel has been preached, men have risen up in arms against the messengers of mercy and afflicted and killed  them wherever they could.”

Spurgeon alludes to the events of 70 AD, but he does not dwell on them or make the passage about them.  And, just when you want to say “Hey, persecution wasn’t just in Paul’s time…”, Spurgeon talks about the blood of the martyrs being shed in all nations.

“…Here Mt omits all mention of being beaten in synagogues, and for ‘ye shall be hated of all men’ he substitutes ‘ye shall be hated of all ‘the nations,’ thus freeing the Jews from the charge of persecution and confining this prediction to the Gentiles. The mention of false prophets at this point (comp. ver. 24), the mutual hatred, the increase of iniquity, and the cooling of love are all peculiar to Mt.; and these expansions emphasize the fact that persecution from without is to be accompanied by grievous deterioration among the Christians themselves. They will even betray one another to the persecutors. This evil element has been mentioned before, in a less definite manner, in the parables of the Tares and of the Net (xiii. 38, 39, 48, 49), of the Unmerciful Servant (xviii. 32), and of the Wedding Garment (xxii. 11); 

For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. 
(Matthew 24:24; KJV)

³⁸The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;  ³⁹The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.   
(Matthew 13:38,39; KJV)

⁴⁸Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.   ⁴⁹So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just  
(Matthew 13:48,49; KJV)

³²Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me:  ³³Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?    
(Matthew 18:32,33; KJV)

¹¹And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:  ¹²And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.  ¹³Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.   
(Matthew 22:11-13; KJV)

“but what is intimated here is a gradual corruption in Christian society, and it is to this no less than to the persecution by the heathen that ‘he that endureth to the end’ (13) applies; comp. x. 22. 

And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.  
(Matthew 10:22; KJV)

I am in general agreement with this last paragraph. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, the word for synagogue only means “a place of assembly”, but, it’s certainly possible that Matthew left the word out intentionally. I’ve also talked about the “gradual corruption in Christian society,” which I’m very glad Spurgeon was seeing in his day.

“Here also there are remarkable parallels in 2 Esdras: ‘But iniquity shall be increased above that which thou now seest, or that thou hast heard long ago’ (v. 2); ‘Whosoever remaineth after all these things that I have told thee of, he shall be saved, and shall see My salvation, and the end of My world’ (vi. 25); ‘Every one that shall be saved, and shall be able to escape by his works, or by faith, shall be preserved, and shall see My salvation’ (ix. 7, 8)…

We’ve seen some quotes from 2 Esdras before, and they have seemed very inline with what we see in the Bible. “Esdras” is another way of saying “Ezra,” and 2 Esdras was mostly written in the late first century AD. According to newworldencyclopedia.org the early chapters are only present in the Latin manuscripts, not in the Greek ones, which implies that the early chapters were added later. This source goes on to say:

“The book as it currently stands claims to be written by Ezra…However, this Ezra is also called ‘Salathiel’ elsewhere in the book, which could make him the father of the exile leader Zerubbabel, rather than Ezra the Scribe. In any case, although it claims to have been written by Ezra/Salathiel around 400 B.C.E., internal evidence suggests a much later date, probably in the late first century C.E., with other sections added even later.” 

 britannica.com says: 

“The central portion of the work (chapters 3-14), consisting of seven visions revealed to the seer Salathiel-Ezra, was written in Aramaic by an unknown Jew around AD 100. In the mid-2nd century AD, a Christian author added an introductory portion (chapters 1-2) to the Greek edition of the book, and a century later another Christian writer appended chapters 15-16 to the same edition. It is possible that the whole Greek edition (from which all subsequent translations were derived, the Aramaic version having been lost) was edited by a Christian author, because there are passages in the central Jewish section that reflect Christian doctrines on original sin and Christology.”

It’s annoying when there is a discrepancy between sources, but it’s usually an indication of disagreement  between scholars.

“10. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. This would be a bitter trial for the followers of Christ, yet this they have always had to endure. Persecution would reveal the traitors within the Church as well as the enemies without. In the midst of the chosen ones, there would be found successors of Judas, who would be willing to betray the disciples as he betrayed his Lord.

“Saddest of all is the betrayal of good men by their own relatives, but even this they have many of them had to bear for Christ’s sake.

“11,12. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.  What could not be accomplished by persecutors outside the Church, and traitors inside, would be attempted by teachers of heresy, ‘Many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.’ They have risen in all ages. In these modern times, they have risen in clouds, till the air is thick with them, as with an army of devouring locusts.”

Great imagery. It certainly feels like that today.

“These are the men who invent new doctrines and who seem to think that the religion of Jesus Christ is something that a man may twist into any form and shape that he pleases. Alas, that such teachers should have any disciples! It is doubly sad that they should be able to lead astray ‘many.’ Yet, when it so happens, let us remember that the King said that it would be so.

“Is is any wonder that where such ‘iniquity abound’ and such lawlessness is multiplied, ‘the love of many shall grow cold’? If the teachers deceive the people and give them ‘another Gospel which is not another,’ it is no marvel that there is a lack of love and zeal. The wonder is that there is any love and zeal left after they have been subjected to such a chilling and killing process as that adopted by the advocates of the modern ‘destructive criticism.’ Verily, it is rightly named ‘destructive,’ for it destroys almost everything that is worth preserving.

“13. But he that shall endure unto the end the same shall be saved. Again our Savior reminded His disciples of the personal responsibility of each one of them in such a time of trial and testing as they were about to pass through. He would have them remember that it is not the man who starts in the race, but the one who runs to the goal, who wins the prize, ‘He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.’

“If this doctrine were not supplemented by another, there would be but little good tidings for poor, tempted, tried, and struggling saints in such words as these. Who among us would persevere in running the heavenly race if God did not preserve us from falling and give us persevering grace? But blessed be His name, ‘The righteous shall hold on his way.’ ‘He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.’

“14. 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 world is to the Church like a scaffold to a building. When the Church is built, the scaffold will be taken down. The world must remain until the last elect one is saved, ‘Then shall the end come.’ Before Jerusalem was destroyed, ‘this Gospel of the kingdom’ was probably ‘preached in all the world,’ so far as it was then known, but there is to be a fuller proclamation of it ‘for a witness unto all nations’ before the great consummation of all things, ‘then shall the end come,’ and the King shall sit upon the throne of His glory and decide the eternal destiny of the whole human race.”         [from COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW: THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM, by Charles H. Spurgeon, 1893]

Spurgeon is very popular, even today, for a reason. As I said earlier, he was a deep thinker, and he interpreted Scripture using Scripture, which is how it should be done. He shows some hints of being effected by the culture of his time, but he mostly moves beyond it.

That’s enough for today. Next time we will be in the 20th century.