Luke 18:8

8. Speedily Here is the grand contradiction reconciled in regard to the time of our Lord’s Second Coming.

He will bear with them long He will avenge them speedily. The time is both distant and near. It is distant to man’s eye; near to the view of Him who measures by the chronology of his own eternity.

When the Son of man cometh Our Lord here intimates that in a most solemn and important sense the faith of the Church will scarce hold out until his Second Coming. She will all but faint in her prayer and watchfulness before that day. This is clearly in unison with those texts which represent that it will be upon an apostate earth that the judgment throne of Christ will appear. 2 Peter 3:4. See Revelation 20:7. Even after the millennium, Satan is released from prison, and deceives again the nations who had before been under the reign of Christ with his saints. The judgment scenes occur immediately after the tribulation of those days. See on Matthew 24:29. Notwithstanding, therefore, the certainty that Christ will in due time avenge his elect, the prayer of the Church may hardly last, and faith upon earth may scarce be found. This by no means proves that the number of the saved will be finally few. The elect, gathered during the millennium day, may be a multitude which no man can number, immensely surpassing the entire catalogue of the damned.