“But of that day andthathour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark 13:32).
But of that day and hour knoweth noman, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Matthew 24:36).
For the last two thousand years, there has been much theological interpretation of what Jesus was saying in these verses recorded by the men who sat at Jesus feet:
“And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples 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?” (Matthew 24:3)
As you read either chapter found in the gospels, Jesus explains to His disciples what the signs will be of the end of the age and His return. Note one thing as you read this chapter: Jesus was living as a mortal man — God in the flesh, a Jewish man that was speaking to other Jewish men who had customs and idioms that modern men must come to understand, in context of what Jesus was teaching to His followers. His disciples were going to have to teach these very things to the rest of the world, so they would have to be able to grasp what these signs were. So Jesus used familiar speech patterns or idioms that each were easy to understand to convey their meaning.
I want you to focus on one passage that Jesus spoke of and it starts the sermon off with what can only be described an idiom that any Jewish man of those times would have understood immediately because it was part of their culture─their very life─and unless we understand these idioms of speech, then the meaning gets lost in translation. What was Jesus referring to when He made the statement, “no man knoweth the day or the hour?”
Our Lord was saying that He was going to return on a certain day of the Jewish calendar that was celebrated each year. It was a phrase that was used to illustrate what the event held to each of them listening. It was a most Holy Day and a special Sabbath of worship that was celebrated in the fall of the year and was signified by the blowing of trumpets, which was to mean the “return of the King.”
Let us examine this topic, which is important to each of us in these last da