Tuesday Evening on Mount Olivet

176:2.1On sev­eral oc­ca­sions Je­sus had made state­ments which led his hear­ers to in­fer that, while he in­tended pres­ently to leave this world, he would most cer­tainly re­turn to con­sum­mate the work of the heav­enly king­dom. As the con­vic­tion grew on his fol­low­ers that he was go­ing to leave them, and af­ter he had de­parted from this world, it was only nat­u­ral for all be­liev­ers to lay fast hold upon these promises to re­turn. The doc­trine of the sec­ond com­ing of Christ thus be­came early in­cor­po­rated into the teach­ings of the Chris­tians, and al­most ev­ery sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tion of dis­ci­ples has de­voutly be­lieved this truth and has con­fi­dently looked for­ward to his some­time com­ing.

176:2.2If they were to part with their Mas­ter and Teacher, how much more did these first dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles grasp at this prom­ise to re­turn, and they lost no time in as­so­ci­at­ing the pre­dicted de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem with this prom­ised sec­ond com­ing. And they con­tin­ued thus to in­ter­pret his words not­with­stand­ing that, through­out this evening of in­struc­tion on Mount Oli­vet, the Mas­ter took par­tic­u­lar pains to pre­vent just such a mis­take.

176:2.3In fur­ther an­swer to Pe­ter’s ques­tion, Je­sus said: “Why do you still look for the Son of Man to sit upon the throne of David and ex­pect that the ma­te­rial dreams of the Jews will be ful­filled? Have I not told you all these years that my king­dom is not of this world? The things which you now look down upon are com­ing to an end, but this will be a new be­gin­ning out of which the gospel of the king­dom will go to all the world and this sal­va­tion will spread to all peo­ples. And when the king­dom shall have come to its full fruition, be as­sured that the Fa­ther in heaven will not fail to visit you with an en­larged rev­e­la­tion of truth and an en­hanced dem­on­stra­tion of righ­teous­ness, even as he has al­ready be­stowed upon this world him who be­came the prince of dark­ness, and then Adam, who was fol­lowed by Mel­chiz­e­dek, and in these days, the Son of Man. And so will my Fa­ther con­tinue to man­i­fest his mercy and show forth his love, even to this dark and evil world. So also will I, af­ter my Fa­ther has in­vested me with all power and au­thor­ity, con­tinue to fol­low your for­tunes and to guide in the af­fairs of the king­dom by the pres­ence of my spirit, who shall shortly be poured out upon all flesh. Even though I shall thus be pres­ent with you in spirit, I also prom­ise that I will some­time re­turn to this world, where I have lived this life in the flesh and achieved the ex­pe­ri­ence of si­mul­ta­ne­ously re­veal­ing God to man and lead­ing man to God. Very soon must I leave you and take up the work the Fa­ther has in­trusted to my hands, but be of good cour­age, for I will some­time re­turn. In the mean­time, my Spirit of the Truth of a uni­verse shall com­fort and guide you.

176:2.4“You be­hold me now in weak­ness and in the flesh, but when I re­turn, it shall be with power and in the spirit. The eye of flesh be­holds the Son of Man in the flesh, but only the eye of the spirit will be­hold the Son of Man glo­ri­fied by the Fa­ther and ap­pear­ing on earth in his own name.

176:2.5“But the times of the reap­pear­ing of the Son of Man are known only in the coun­cils of Par­a­dise; not even the an­gels of heaven know when this will oc­cur. How­ever, you should un­der­stand that, when this gospel of the king­dom shall have been pro­claimed to all the world for the sal­va­tion of all peo­ples, and when the full­ness of the age has come to pass, the Fa­ther will send you an­other dis­pen­sa­tional be­stowal, or else the Son of Man will re­turn to ad­judge the age.

176:2.6“And now con­cern­ing the tra­vail of Je­ru­sa­lem, about which I have spo­ken to you, even this gen­er­a­tion will not pass away un­til my words are ful­filled; but con­cern­ing the times of the com­ing again of the Son of Man, no one in heaven or on earth may pre­sume to speak. But you should be wise re­gard­ing the ripen­ing of an age; you should be alert to dis­cern the signs of the times. You know when the fig tree shows its ten­der branches and puts forth its leaves that sum­mer is near. Like­wise, when the world has passed through the long win­ter of ma­te­rial-mind­ed­ness and you dis­cern the com­ing of the spir­i­tual spring­time of a new dis­pen­sa­tion, should you know that the sum­mer­time of a new vis­i­ta­tion draws near.

176:2.7“But what is the sig­nif­i­cance of this teach­ing hav­ing to do with the com­ing of the Sons of God? Do you not per­ceive that, when each of you is called to lay down his life strug­gle and pass through the por­tal of death, you stand in the im­me­di­ate pres­ence of judg­ment, and that you are face to face with the facts of a new dis­pen­sa­tion of ser­vice in the eter­nal plan of the in­fi­nite Fa­ther? What the whole world must face as a lit­eral fact at the end of an age, you, as in­di­vid­u­als, must each most cer­tainly face as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence when you reach the end of your nat­u­ral life and thereby pass on to be con­fronted with the con­di­tions and de­mands in­her­ent in the next rev­e­la­tion of the eter­nal pro­gres­sion of the Fa­ther’s king­dom.”

176:2.8Of all the dis­courses which the Mas­ter gave his apos­tles, none ever be­came so con­fused in their minds as this one, given this Tues­day evening on the Mount of Olives, re­gard­ing the two­fold sub­ject of the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem and his own sec­ond com­ing. There was, there­fore, lit­tle agree­ment be­tween the sub­se­quent writ­ten ac­counts based on the mem­o­ries of what the Mas­ter said on this ex­traor­di­nary oc­ca­sion. Con­se­quently, when the rec­ords were left blank con­cern­ing much that was said that Tues­day evening, there grew up many tra­di­tions; and very early in the sec­ond cen­tury a Jew­ish apoc­a­lyp­tic about the Mes­siah writ­ten by one Selta, who was at­tached to the court of the Em­peror Caligula, was bod­ily copied into the Mat­thew Gospel and sub­se­quently added (in part) to the Mark and Luke rec­ords. It was in these writ­ings of Selta that the para­ble of the ten vir­gins ap­peared. No part of the gospel rec­ord ever suf­fered such con­fus­ing mis­con­struc­tion as this evening’s teach­ing. But the Apos­tle John never be­came thus con­fused.

176:2.9As these thir­teen men re­sumed their jour­ney to­ward the camp, they were speech­less and un­der great emo­tional ten­sion. Ju­das had fi­nally con­firmed his de­ci­sion to aban­don his as­so­ciates. It was a late hour when David Zeb­e­dee, John Mark, and a num­ber of the lead­ing dis­ci­ples wel­comed Je­sus and the twelve to the new camp, but the apos­tles did not want to sleep; they wanted to know more about the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem, the Mas­ter’s de­par­ture, and the end of the world.