So with the case of Lot. According to St. Peter (2 Pet.2.7-8) Lot was a just and righteous man continually distressed in spirit by the lawlessness with which he was surrounded. Like Noah, he was apprised in advance of the fate overshadowing Sodom; in just the same manner the subterranean powers which were shortly to blow the Cities of the Plain sky high were gathering strength. Lot and his daughters, the only ones who believed, were led out of the doomed city by the celestial messenger to a place of safety. As with Noah, there was a short lull, this time a space of six or seven hours apparent inactivity, and then Sodom blew up.

There is one apparently casual word in the story of Sodom's destruction which establishes that six or seven hours and provides a parallel to the most famous of our Lord's allusions to his Second Coming, the one in which He likened it to the "astrape", the emergence of dawn from the East rapidly growing into full meridian day. The account says that the Divine messengers gave the word to leave the doomed city "when the morning arose", "shachar alah"—"when the dawn came up", denoting the moment of dawn when, in that latitude, the first shafts of light appear on the eastern horizon, always within an hour of 6 a.m. (The same word for the same phenomenon appears variously in the Old Testament as "dayspring" (Job 38.12) "wings of the morning" (Psa.139.9) "eyelids of the morning" (Job 41.18) etc. The messengers bade Lot "flee to the mountain" for refuge; he obtained permission to take refuge instead in the "little city" of Zoar because it was nearer and more convenient. He was to make haste; the threatened destruction could not be initiated until he and his daughters were safely within Zoar. The narrative continues "the sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar" (Gen.19.23). Here the words are "shemesh yatsa", "the sun had gone forth over the land"; this refers to the full blaze of the solar orb at the meridian—noonday. The implication is that Lot's flight from Sodom to Zoar extended from dawn to noon—six or seven hours. Comparison of the topography of the district with details given in the narrative favours the conclusion that the cities lay some twelve to sixteen miles apart so that several hours journey on foot is indicated.

Jesus may well have used this illustration in relation to his Advent in knowledge of this fact. The Divine messenger, come for deliverance and also for judgment, was present in person and in plenitude of power, when the dawn—the "astrape" of the New Testament—rose over the mountains of Moab to the east of Sodom, but his first work was to deliver the faithful; the rest were ignorant and unbelieving. That deliverance effected, the messenger returned to the city for judgment "then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven" (Gen.19.24). The analogy with the order of events of the Second Advent is perfect.

Some such picture, then, may have been in our Lord's mind when He made his historic reply to the disciples' question put to him shortly before his death: "when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of thy presence, and of the end of the Age?" (Matt.24.3 R.V. & Diaglott). After a fairly extensive preamble covering the period between the First and Second Advents, with allusion to the tribulations which were to come upon the Jewish people (vss.5-22) and a brief intimation that only after the Gospel had been preached in all the world "for a witness" (vs.14) would the end come, He sketched briefly the evidences of the successive phases of his Advent. The first of these is contained in vss.23-28 and the gist of this is that claims would be made for the appearance of Christ in this spot or that spot, as though He could be located within earthly limitations as in the days of his First Advent, and that such claims were not to be believed. "If they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not" (vs.26). The word for "desert" here means a solitary or uninhabited place, but not necessarily arid; it could equally well be green and pleasant and in fact refers mainly to the wilderness east of Jordan where John the Baptist and some of the old Hebrew prophets lived and conducted their work, and into which the people went in order to hear them. The initial coming of Christ is not to be in the style of those men, as the visible centre of a multitude, plainly to be viewed before them and known of all, as were John, Elijah, Moses and others. Neither is He to be manifested in the "secret chambers". The A.V. rendering gives a misleading impression. The word is "tameion" which is used in the New Testament, the Apocrypha and the Septuagint for the family private or inner apartment of the house (Matt.6.6, Luke 12.3)—particularly of the bride chamber (Tobit 7.16); sometimes of the storeroom or barn (Luke 12.24, Deut.28.8). This was the room in which honoured guests were received to meet the invited company as in the feasts which Jesus attended in the houses of Matthew, Zaccheus and Simon of Bethany. Just as on the one hand this initial phase of his Coming is not a general public spectacle, equally so it is not a private physical appearance to a selected circle of intimate followers reminiscent of the days when they sat at a feast and listened to his words. And in one eloquent metaphor Jesus lifted the whole conception of his Coming to the plane of celestial values by likening the first phase of his Advent to the oncoming dawn, which in the latitude of Jerusalem is seen at first only by those watching for its onset, and by the sleeping masses in general only after it has already measurably flooded the skies with light.

"As the brightness" ("lightning" A.V.) "cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the presence" ("coming" A.V.) "of the Son of man be" (vs.27). This refers without any doubt to the dawn; "astrape", here rendered "lightning", refers to any brilliant or blinding radiance, whether lightning or not, as in Luke 9.29 (glistering raiment) Luke 11.36 (bright shining candle) Luke 24.4 (shining garments) Acts 9.3 (shined a light from heaven) Acts 22.6 (there shone a great light) Deut.32.41 (glittering sword) Hab.3.11 (glittering spear) 4 Macc.4.10 (angels all radiant in armour) but the sun's light is the only such radiance that originates in the east and passes to the west. In thus comparing his Coming with this light of dawn in the east Jesus associated the idea with watchfulness. Only those who watched would be aware that his Coming had become a fact, just as only the watchmen in Israel ever actually witnessed the rising light of the "astrape" in the east indicating that the night was past and day had come. "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh" (Matt.25.13).

The full force of our Lord's meaning can only be grasped when the nature of sunrise in Middle Eastern latitudes is appreciated. Dawn is a fairly leisurely process in this country but the nearer to the tropics, the more rapid is the transition from total darkness to full daylight. A few quotations from travellers who have actually witnessed sunrise in and near the latitude of the Holy Land illuminate the words of Jesus in Matthew 24.

H.V.Morton, in his book "In the steps of the Master" says: "As I sat on the stone thinking of these things, a light began to fill the sky. The sun rises over Jerusalem from behind the Mount of Olives. I turned my back on the city and, looking up over the Mount, saw a great fan of light pulsing up from the east. The fire filled the sky and turned the little clouds in its path to pink and gold, but the high ridge of the Mount, almost black against the palpitating light, hid the sun from view....The sun topped the crest of the Mount of Olives, and, looking again towards Jerusalem, I saw the highest buildings gilded with light though the wall was yet unlit. In a few seconds a flood of light fell over the city, ran down the wall and into the valley of the Kedron. It swept up the stony flanks of the opposite valley, and I felt my face and my hands warm in its light."

"How often must Jesus and the disciples have watched this splendid sight from the Mount of Olives. They must have seen the city ramparts light up with the first rays of the sun. They must have seen, just above the Garden of Gethsemane, the towering white and gold mass of the Temple. They must have seen a priest come out on a pinnacle, as he came every morning, to look towards the east and report, before the first sacrifice of the day, 'The sun shineth already!' They might even have heard in the still air of dawn the daily cry from the assembled priests: 'Is the sky lit up as far as Hebron?', and the daily response of the watcher from the pinnacle: 'It is lit up as far as Hebron!' "

The same writer describes sunrise at Gaza, a little to the south of Jerusalem. "And now, as we went onward, I saw a gathering tumult in the east. A white, palpitating light was filling the sky. It was like something approaching at great speed, a mighty army with its chariots and its horsemen. Swords of light thrust their way upwards, catching stray clouds and turning them to banners of pink and gold. Then, like an orange flung into the air, the sun leapt up, fully armed, into the sky: it was warm, and the dead earth was instantly, vividly, and rather violently, alive."

Lord James Bryce, describing his ascent of Mount Ararat in 1876, thus describes sunrise as seen from his position halfway up the mountain (Transcaucasia and Ararat): "About 3 a.m. there suddenly sprang up, from behind the Median mountains, the morning star, shedding a light such as no star ever gives in these northern climes of ours, a light that almost outshone the moon. An hour later it began to pale in the first faint flush of yellowish light that spread over the eastern heaven, and first the rocky masses above us, then Little Ararat, throwing behind him a gigantic shadow, then the long lines of mountains beyond the Araxes, became revealed, while the wide Araxes plains still lay dim and shadowy below. One by one the stars died out as the yellow turned to a deeper glow that shot forth in long streamers, rosy fingers hovering above the snows on the mighty cone; till at last there came upon the topmost slope, six thousand feet above us, a sudden blush of pink. Swiftly it floated down the eastern face, and touched and kindled the rocks just above us. Then the sun flamed out, and in a moment the Araxes valley and all the hollows of the savage ridges we were crossing were flooded with overpowering light."

Helen McLeod, recording her life in New Guinea ("Cannibals are Human".1962) describes dawn at Port Moresby. "The eastern quadrant of the sky flushed rosily, shafts of sunlight burst through and the clouds were alight with flame. Then the tropical sun blazed forth, flooding the bay with colour and light."

In everyday life few of the people in Jesus' day actually witnessed this wonderful phenomenon, for their sleep was broken only by the full blaze of the sun as its light swept over the sky. Hence the Scriptural association of the coming of day with the "watchers" and that somewhat cryptic message in Isa.21.11-12 "Watchman, how far gone is the night" (Rotherham) and the watchman's reply "The morning cometh (is at hand)". Only the watchers saw this glorious effulgence of golden light rising fan-wise in the east and moving visibly across the sky towards the west, turning the clouds in its path to pink and white and bathing the whole land in its glow. The watching priest, stationed on a pinnacle of the Temple, cried out in a loud voice that the light was come and his colleagues below immediately commenced the ritual of the morning sacrifice. Presently the full blaze of day would be shining upon the people as they awoke from sleep and betook themselves to their accustomed tasks. This emergence of light from the east, followed quickly by the sun itself is referred to in Mal.4.2 the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings—the great fan of light spreading over the sky being likened to the wings of some great celestial creature. It must be remembered that Mal.4 is a prophecy of the Second Advent and that it is only to "you that fear my name" that the Sun of righteousness thus arises, and not to all, thus confirming the implication of Matt.24 that not humanity in general, but only the watching Church, perceives this first phase of the Advent. It is here that every reference to the need for watchfulness and to his Coming as a thief in the night, silently and unobtrusively, finds full application without doing any violence to those other Scriptures which picture the later phases of the Advent as outwardly spectacular and universally known.

The fact of the Advent is discerned, not by the natural senses but the spiritual, not by the eyes and ears of flesh but by those of faith, faith which is soundly based upon an understanding of the essential differences between the natural and spiritual worlds, and knows that his celestial being and glory is one that "no man hath seen, nor can see" (1 Tim.6.16). But although unseen by man, that glory and that world is none the less a real glory and a real world. In some manner, we know not how, the powers of the celestial realm approach and make contact with this terrestrial order as the purpose of God progresses towards the elimination of evil and the supremacy of good. It may be that what we call the beginning of the Second Advent is the initial contact which that world makes with this; the Power directing that contact, and thereby setting in motion the forces which are eventually to result in the kingdoms of this world giving place to the power of the Kingdom of God, is in Person the One who promised his disciples so long ago "If I go away, I will come again". So, like the dawn flaming over the mountains in the sight of his watchmen while the world is still asleep, He comes. AOH