QUES. 2. – A friend writes desiring that an explanation of Mark 13 :32 be given in Help and Food. This same passage was considered in this magazine in 1919, page 224; but as this volume may not be accessible to most of our readers, we repeat in part what was said there.

ANS. – The apparent difficulty in this passage vanishes as soon as the position which our Lord took in coming into this world is distinctly apprehended.

After the first man had been long and fully tested through various dispensations, in them all proving himself a hopeless sinner, away from God, with no power to restore himself, the "due time" had come for God to send His Son to retrieve His glory, and for the salvation of man.

The Second Man – a new man – begins at the very first point of human life. Begotten of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin, with no taint of sin in His nature, but a real man in whom God was to be glorified in the very world in which the first man had so terribly dishonored Him. This wondrous task is what the Second Man came to accomplish – "I come to do thy will, O God." In this perfect obedience He would do nothing of Himself, 'but only and all that the Father gave Him to do and say. See John 12:49, 50; 10:18; 5:19, etc.

It was not the Father's will to reveal "that day and hour" when the Son of Man is to return in power and glory and His faithful Servant had received no communication as to it. The obedient Servant therefore neither did nor would know, nor draw upon His divine knowledge as one in the Trinity – that would have been acting without the Father, which He never did.

The mystery of His humanity and Godhead in one person is beyond our understanding, of course. The apostle himself confesses it (1 Tim. 4:16). But think of our blessed Lord as God's Servant here, as Mark especially presents Him, and the passage is simple and clear.