No Man knows the day or the hour
Really, no one knows the day or the hour? Did Jesus mean to say that even he was unaware of the day of his return? How is that possible if he as God, knows everything? In this article, we’ll suggest a possible answer. But, when the frail flesh of humanity tries to explain the divine, we will always fall far short of understanding. But let’s give it an old college try anyway.
We’ve already covered the subject of the fig tree and the final generation. But before moving on I felt I should bring the five key verses together into one article. At the end of this article, I post an extended excerpt from the Pulpit Commentary. The writer/writers present a strong biblical position that helps explain how Jesus, as truly divine, could have suggested he didn’t know the timing and date of his future return.
Something else is important to take note of. The day or the hour indicates an exact day or hour. The doctrine of imminency suggests it can happen at any moment.
Matthew 24:32 The fig tree lesson
“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near.”
The lesson has little or nothing to do with the nation of Israel. Many prophecy teachers make this passage all about Israel, but it is not. The Lord referred to an agricultural fact that his listeners were aware of. When the fig tree starts to grow new branches and leaves then everyone knows that summer is near. The accumulation of all the signs into one generation should alert the observant that the arrival of Christ is near.
We shouldn’t ever assert that Christ is near unless the later signs mentioned in this discourse occur along with the earlier signs.
Matthew 24:33 The day or the hour when Jesus is near
“So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates.”
Let me state this again in case you didn’t read it the first time. WHEN YOU SEE ALL THESE THINGS YOU KNOW THAT HE IS NEAR.
Sorry for the all-caps expression, but the preterist and many of the modern futurists ignore this verse. All of the signs must occur in the same generation. The preterist, anti-Israel position teaches that all the prophecies occurred in the first generation when the temple was destroyed. But when did the gathering of the saints take place? When did the sign of the Son of Man appear in heaven in AD 70? Today the modern futurist looks at the moon and howls for the return of Jesus and ignores the other signs.
Take Jesus at his word. Don’t fudge the prophecies to fit your latest version of what you think will push sales of your book or increase clicks on your YouTube channel.
Matthew 24:34 The day or the hour of the last generation
“Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”
What generation? The generation that sees all the signs. The preterist thinks it was the first generation. But they ignore the passages about many false Christs and their great signs and wonders. They skipped the prophecy of the Lord, Paul, and Daniel about a man standing in the Holy Place and declaring himself as the Almighty God. (The Abomination of Desolation) They brush over the prophecy of the Gospel preaching to the entire world. The Apostle John put that in his final writing. He said an angel will finish that work by flying through the skies declaring the message to the unrepentant.
Matthew 24:35 The eternal Word and the day or the hour
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
God’s Words will endure into eternity. Our feeble interpretations and attempts to explain the latest version of can’t miss prophecies will be long forgotten in the ages to come. Thanks be to the Lord for that.
Matthew 24:36 Only the Father knows the day or the hour
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”
Did Jesus know the day or the hour of his return? I believe he knows now but when he was living in human flesh the knowledge of things came from the Holy Spirit and the Father’s input. He set aside His divine attributes so he could live a fully-human experience and then offer his perfect human life as the sacrifice acceptable to God’s covenant standards.
Please see the following excerpt and accompanying links that help explain this view.
Pulpit Commentary
Verse 36. – The apostles had asked (ver. 3), “When shall these things be?” Christ does not now expressly answer this question; he puts forth strongly the uncertainty in the knowledge of these great events, and how this ignorance is disciplinary. Of that day (de die illa, Vulgate) and hour, viz. when Christ shall appear in judgment,
A definite day
The expression plainly implies that a definite day and moment are fixed for this great appearing, but known only to God. Knoweth no man, no, not (οὐδὲ, not even) the angels of heaven. A kind of climax. Man is naturally excluded from the knowledge, but even to the angels, it has not been revealed.
Mark’s Gospel
A further climax is added in St. Mark, and from that Gospel has been introduced by some very good manuscripts into this place, neither the Son (the Revised Version admits the clause). The words have given occasion to some erroneous statements. It is said by Arians and semi-Arians, and modern disputants who have followed in their steps, that the Son cannot be equal to the Father if he knows not what the Father knows. Alford says boldly, “This matter was hidden from him.”
I and the Father are One
But when we consider such passages as “I and my Father are one;” “I am in the Father, and the Father in me” (John 10:30; John 14:11, etc.), we cannot believe that the time of the great consummation was unknown to him. What is meant, then, by this assertion? How is it true? Doubtless, it is to be explained (if capable of explanation) by the hypostatic union of two natures in the Person of Christ, whereby the properties of the two natures are interchangeably predicated.
Athen’s Creed
From the danger of error on this mysterious subject we are preserved by the precise terms of the Athanasian Creed, according to which we affirm that Christ is “equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father, as touching his manhood … one altogether; not by confusion of substance, but by unity of Person,” etc.
Was Christ ignorant of the day and the hour?
If then, Christ asserts that he is ignorant of anything, it must be that in his human nature, he hath, willed not to know that which in his Divine nature he was cognizant cf. This is a part of that voluntary self-surrender and self-limitation of which the apostle speaks when he says that Christ “emptied himself” (Philippians 2:7). He condescended to assume all the conditions of humanity, even willing to share the imperfection of our knowledge in some particulars.
The two natures
How the two natures thus interworked we know not and need not conjecture; nor can we always divine why prominence at one time is given to the Divine, at another to the human. It is enough for us to know that, for reasons which seemed good unto him, he imposed a restriction on his omniscience in this matter, and, to enhance the mysteriousness and awfulness of the great day, announced to his disciples his ignorance of the precise moment of its occurrence.
A safer (better) interpretation of the day and the hour
This is a safer exposition than to say, with some, that Christ knew not the day so as to reveal it to us, that it was no part of his mission from the Father to divulge it to men, and therefore that he could truly say he knew it not. This seems rather an evasion than an explanation of the difficulty. But my Father only. The best manuscripts have “The Father.” “But” is εἰ μὴ, except.
Not for you to know
So Christ said to his inquiring apostles, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power” (Acts 1:7). These words do not exclude the Son’s participation in the knowledge, though he willed that it should not extend to his human nature. With this and such-like texts in view, how futile, presumptuous, and indeed profane, it is to attempt to settle the exact date and hour when the present age shall end!”
What did this early Church Father believe regarding the Antichrist?
Let me know what you think.