Verse 25. - And the stars shall be falling from heaven (ἔσονται ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ πίπτοντες) and the powers that are in the heavens shall be shaken. In the great events of the creation recorded in Genesis 1 the sun and the moon and the stars did not show their light until that period which is called the fourth day. So in the end of the world, the sun and the moon and the stars are represented as withdrawing their light, perhaps figuratively, but perhaps also literally, in the course of some of the unknown physical changes which shall accompany the winding up of the present dispensation. To this agree the next words, "the powers that are in the heavens shall be shaken." The powers may here mean those great unseen forces of nature by which the universe is now held in equipoise. When the Creator wills it, these powers shall be shaken. (See Job 26:11, "The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof;" see also Isaiah 34:4, "And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll.") As the end of the world approaches, the elements will quiver and tremble. 13:24-27 The disciples had confounded the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world. This mistake Christ set right, and showed that the day of Christ's coming, and the day of judgment, shall be after that tribulation. Here he foretells the final dissolution of the present frame and fabric of the world. Also, the visible appearance of the Lord Jesus coming in the clouds, and the gathering together of all the elect to him.And the stars of heaven shall fall,.... The Jewish Rabbins and doctors, who fell off from the written word, and compiled their "Misna", or oral law, their book of traditions, and set it up above the Bible, the foundation of which was laid immediately upon their dispersion. And the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken; the ordinances of the legal dispensation, which were shaken before, but now so shaken as to be removed; compare Haggai 2:6 with Hebrews 12:26; See Gill on Matthew 24:29. |