safety could such a flight secure if a universal ruin were intended? From such a catastrophe there could be no escape. He also said, "Two shall be in the field; one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left."[1] This most plainly shows that "the end" of which He was speaking could not refer to the destruction of the earth, for we find that the fields and the mills are to remain, and that persons are to be left in the pursuit of their usual occupations. These things never could have been said if the destruction of the earth had been the subject of the Apostle's question and the Lord's discourse. Besides, the original, which, in the Apostle's inquiry, is translated "the world," properly means "the age," so that the phrase "end of the world" simply denotes the termination of the age. Dr. Campbell renders it "conclusion of the state;" Dr. A. Clarke says it denotes the "end of the Jewish economy;" and Elsley considers it to import "the whole of any duration;"[2] so that nothing is deducible from the terms of the Apostle's inquiry to favour the supposition of the destruction of the earth; neither is there anything in the Lord's answer which admits of such a construction, or that favours such a view.
It is true that the Lord, when speaking of the trials that had to be endured, said, "Immediately after the tribulation
- ↑ Matt. xxiv. 40, 41.
- ↑ "Two Greek words (χόσμος and αίων) are rendered in the common English version by the same word, namely, "world." Only the former, however, is ever employed to denote this material structure, and the latter is uniformly employed to denote a period or dispensation. In every instance where the phrase "end of the world" occurs, the word αίων, or period, and cannot possibly be made to mean the economy of material things."—Rev. E. H. Sears. Foregleams of Immortality. Art., "The Judgment Day."
