Many false teachers had arisen, even in those early days of the gospel, pretending to set forth the signs of Christ’s coming to take vengeance on His enemies; and therefore the disciples had requested of their Master some certain information on this momentous topic: they “came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you: For many shall come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars, and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” { 291}
Our Lord proceeds to detail a great variety of other circumstances which should occur, some of them belonging to the desolations of Judea, some to the future judgment alone, and some to both these events; of which latter kind is the description connected with the text: “There shall be two in the field; the 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:” that is, though destruction shall fall upon the Jewish nation at large, for their rebellion against God, their resistance to the clear evidence of the gospel, their shedding of the blood of His beloved Son, yet shall not all be equally involved in the same calamity and perdition. Divine providence will then make a distinction between those, who have obstinately rejected and maliciously persecuted the Saviour and His holy religion, and those, whose hearts have been opened to the reception “of the truth as it is in Jesus;” who, being convinced and converted, have become His faithful followers.
And though the whole race be so intermingled, one amongst another, by the various offices and duties and relations of life, that to the eye of man there may be no distinguishable difference amongst them; yet the all-seeing God, who “is a discerner of the thoughts of the heart,” will not be misguided by any outward appearances; will perceive a very manifest difference in characters seemingly alike: will infallibly know whom to punish and whom to spare. As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, He singled out, and selected for preservation, one righteous person, (and for his sake, a portion of his family also,) so, in the storm of vengeance about to fall upon the devoted city of Jerusalem, He would, in many signal instances, make the same merciful distinction. And the declaration, thus made, was calculated at once to comfort and encourage the faithful, and to alarm the conscience and check the presumption of the wicked.