Acts 1:7

7. The times or the seasons Without confirming, denying, or correcting their notion, postponing the right informing of their views to the Pentecost, Jesus gently reproves their impatience in regard to the time. He gives an admonition which Christians of all ages would do well to note. The attempting by prophetic calculations to fix the precise date of any future event reduces the Scripture to a mere fortune-teller’s manual. Few errors within the limits of Christianity have been more dangerous or disgraceful in effect either upon the credit of the Bible, or upon the mind of the individuals. The word times here signifies the great current, and seasons the particular points or epochs of time.

Put in his own power A very striking expression, indicating that the Omnipotent reserves for his own decision the great events of the world, and especially the world’s “last things.” God is his own counsellor, and, like a wise sovereign, keeps his own secrets of state. Nay, more, the free actions of men being undecreed are intrinsically alternative, and able to proceed in either of diverse ways. See note on Matthew 11:23; Matthew 11:25, and Romans 2:1-10; Romans 8:29-30. Israel was able to accept Messiah-Jesus. And had all Israel been thus true to her national mission, the Pentecostal outpouring would not have been confined to the precincts of an upper room. The latter glory would have forthwith filled the temple and the nation, and such would have been its wondrous manifestation of splendour and of power that Rome would have bowed the knee, and the fulness of the Gentiles would have been gathered in. Christ would have even seen the travail of his soul and been satisfied. The consummation and the advent might have been hastened by centuries, perhaps by millenniums. The Father thus reserves the times and seasons in his own power, in view of the contingencies of the world’s future events and courses. (See note Acts 2:1.) This reservation by the Father is in striking harmony with our Lord’s declaration in Mark 13:32, where not only men and angels, but even the Son, is excluded from a knowledge of the day and the hour. (See our note.) This declaration of our Lord furnishes the key-note for St. Paul’s times and seasons, 1 Thessalonians 5:1, and other similar passages.

Bengel remarks, however, “The thing itself is true, otherwise there would be no time for the thing.” True, it may be replied; but what the true nature of the thing is that is, of the restoration of the kingdom or nationality to Israel our Lord stops not to explain. It may be that the true kingdom the Church of God is to be restored to the natural Israel only by his becoming a part of the true Israel. And this is implied by the universal spread of the Gospel, described in Acts 1:8. Thus much is certain, that the New Testament contains not one explicit literal declaration that the Jewish nation is to be so restored to the land of Palestine, or that Jerusalem is to be again the local head of the theocracy or kingdom of God. Neither Jerusalem nor the Jew is recognised as a distinct department or element in the new dispensation.