You will recall that the Lord commands us to flee from our homes and
cities when Antichrist comes to power and sets up an image of himself in
the churches so that it becomes impossible to worship God as a church
and congregation. In verses 16-18 Jesus speaks of the urgency of
immediate flight, a passage that I discussed in the last article. In
these verses we now consider, our Lord points us to the suffering that
is involved in fleeing for our lives.
There is an interesting sidelight to this entire passage. As you
probably know, the church suffered terrible persecution ordered by the
Roman world power. This persecution lasted from about 50 AD to 325 AD,
when Constantine the Great issued a decree of toleration of
Christianity. During those 275 years the church was not under constant
persecution, but it was somewhat sporadic and was more or less severe in
the different provinces. But it was a time of great distress during
which the Roman emperor claimed to be divine and all men were supposed
to worship him. The emperor of the Roman Empire was a pre-figure of the
Antichrist, and was the legs of iron in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, which
Daniel interpreted (Daniel 2).
When the Christians were persecuted by the Roman authorities, some of
the ministers especially, but also office bearers, fled into hiding to
escape persecution. When the persecution stopped, they came back to
their congregations to resume their labors, but in some instances the
people and other churches would not have them, because they fled to
escape persecution. I am not in a position to judge whether these men
were right or wrong in fleeing, for the Lord’s command in these verses
is a command that must be obeyed, but the Roman Empire was not yet the
antichristian kingdom. Nevertheless, the saint that lived at that time
could not easily see it in any other way than that the Roman emperor was
himself the Antichrist. God will have to judge and He will judge
righteously, because He can read the heart and know the deepest motive
for their fleeing.
However that may be, when Antichrist himself sets up his world-wide
kingdom, all God’s people will know that the time has come to obey the
command of the Lord to flee.
This text underscores how difficult the flight will be. Pregnant and
nursing mothers will have an especially difficult time of it, for the
care of an infant will make flight all the more difficult. And if the
time of flight comes in places like the place where we live, it will be
very difficult to endure the snow and ice, the cold and winds when we
are without shelter and must flee, perhaps hundreds of miles.
I am not sure why the Lord adds “But pray ye that your flight not be . .
. on the Sabbath day.” Some commentators say that a Sabbath day’s
flight will be more difficult because less people will be working and
great hordes of people can be assembled to chase and catch fleeing
Christians. Other commentators say that a flight on the Sabbath day
would harm the consciences of believers who refuse to travel on the
Sabbath and consider it a desecration of the Sabbath.
I am not sure about the reason why Jesus includes this statement about
the Sabbath, but I do think that God’s people who have all their life
worshipped in church on Sunday would find it very difficult not to go to
church, but instead to be running away rather than worshipping. Keeping
the Sabbath by church attendance is very important to them.
At any rate, Jesus ties His command to us to flee to the persecution
that will begin when Antichrist comes to power. And surely the Lord
means that we must flee because it will help us escape persecution. This
is not exactly so easy to understand, for today’s electronic equipment
in many ways can find fleeing people very easily. And modern methods of
chase, such as helicopters and satellite-carrying cameras, will make
hiding very difficult. And by verses 19-20 the Lord means to underscore
how difficult flight will be.
But we are commanded
to flee. When the saints in the early church were persecuted, some were
so eager to suffer for Christ’s sake that they ran to the authorities
to tell them they were Christians and to beg the authorities to
persecute them. A man by the name of Origin was one of the greatest
theologians in the early church; though he was eccentric and sometimes
heretical. But when his father was imprisoned and was waiting to be put
to death, Origin wanted to join him in prison and in death. The only way
his mother could keep him in the house was to hide all his clothes, for
he was too modest to go out into the public naked.
The Lord does not command us to seek persecution. We are to flee. If it
is God’s will that we endure the suffering of fleeing or the suffering
of outright persecution, we are to bear this suffering, rejoicing that
God considers us worthy of suffering for Christ’s sake (Acts 5:41). But
it is also necessary that some saints (though only a few) are still
alive when Christ comes back. It is the Lord’s command that we flee.
This then, is what we must do in obedience to Him.
Prof. H. Hanko
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