Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.
All Commentaries on Matthew 24:23 Go To Matthew 24
John Chrysostom
AD 407
Having finished what concerned Jerusalem, He passes on to His own coming, and tells the signs of it, not for their use only, but for us also, and for all that shall come after us.
Then. When? Here, as I have often said, the word, then, relates not to the connection in order of time with the things before mentioned. At least, when He was minded to express the connection of time, He added, Immediately after the tribulation of those days, Matthew 24:29 but here not so, but, then, not meaning what should follow straightway after these things, but what should be in the time, when these things were to be done, of which He was about to speak. So also when it is said, In those days comes John the Baptist, he is not speaking of the time that should straightway follow, but that many years after, and that in which these things were done, of which He was about to speak. For, in fact, having spoken of the birth of Jesus, and of the coming of the magi, and of the death of Herod, He at once says, In those days comes John the Baptist; although thirty years had intervened. But this is customary in the Scripture, I mean, to use this manner of narration. So then here also, having passed over all the intermediate time from the taking of Jerusalem unto the preludes of the consummation, He speaks of the time just before the consummation. Then, He says therefore, if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe it not.
Awhile He secures them by the place, mentioning the distinguishing marks of His second coming, and the indications of the deceivers. For not, as when at His former coming He appeared in Bethlehem, and in a small corner of the world, and no one knew Him at the beginning, so does He say it shall be then too; but openly and with all circumstance, and so as not to need one to tell these things. And this is no small sign that He will not come secretly.
