Public Declarations

Christ Coming into His Kingdom

Biblical Theology, Prophecy

As regards the Second Coming of Christ, it will scarcely be questioned that it was somehow connected with statements, which we now see to have primarily referred to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.  Equally there can be no doubt, that the men of Christ's time expected His Advent, and also that every age since has done the same; and, indeed, was intended to do so. . . . 

And the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple was not only a symbol, but in an initial sense the very coming of Christ into His Kingdom.That coming of Christ into His Kingdom, which had been denied in explicit words, and negatived by public deed, when by wicked hands they slew Him, was vindicated, and, so to speak, publicly enacted when the Roman solider threw the torch into the Temple, and when afterwards Jerusalem was laid level with the dust.  As regards the men of that land and generation, it was the public proclamation, the evidence, that Christ Whom they had rejected had come into His Kingdom.  By the lurid light of those flames no other words could be read than those on the Cross: "This is the King of the Jews".  I say, then, the burning of Jerusalem was to that generation--and whatever kindred events successively came within the focus of the telescopic vision of following generations, were to them, the fulfilment of that prophecy, of which the final completion will be the personal reappearance of Christ at the end of the Aeon.

Alfred Edersheim, Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), p. 132f.