That they would see the abomination of desolation, and there would be great tribulation, such as had not been from the beginning of the world until then, nor ever would be; and except those days should be shortened no flesh would be saved; and finally the sun shall be darkened, the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven (Matt. 24:15, 21, 22, 29). That time is also called night elsewhere in the Gospels, as in Luke:

In that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken and the other left (17:34). And in John:

I must work the works of Him that sent Me, the night cometh when no man can work (9:4). [2] As at midnight all light departs, and the Lord is the true light (John 1:4-9; 8:12; 12:35, 36, 46), so when the Lord ascended to heaven He said to His disciples:

Lo, I am with you always, even unto the consummation of the age (Matt. 27:20);

and then it is that He departs from them to a new church. That this last time of the church is the very night in which the former churches have come to an end can be seen also from the following passages in Daniel:

At last upon the bird of abomination shall be desolation and even to the consummation and decision shall it drop upon the devastation (9:27). That this is a prediction respecting the end of the Christian church is clearly evident from the Lord's words in Matthew (24:15); as also from what is said in Daniel respecting the fourth kingdom, or the fourth church, represented by Nebuchadnezzar's statue:

Whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of man; but they shall not cohere one with the other even as iron doth not mingle with clay (Dan. 2:43), "the seed of man" meaning the truth of the Word. [3] And again, from what is said respecting the fourth church represented by the fourth beast coming up out of the sea:

I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible; it shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces (Dan. 7:7, 23). This means that all the truth of the church will be consummated, and then it will be night, because the truth of the church is light. Respecting this church there are many other like predictions in the Apocalypse, especially in the sixteenth chapter which treats of the vials full of the wrath of God poured out upon the earth, these vials signifying the falsities that would then inundate and destroy the church. So likewise in many places in the Prophets, as in the following:

Shall not the day of Jehovah be darkness and not light? even thick darkness and no brightness? (Amos 5:18, 20; Zeph. 1:15). Again:

In that day Jehovah shall look down upon the land, and behold darkness, and the light is darkened in the ruins thereof (Isa. 5:30; 8:22), "the day of Jehovah" meaning the day of the Lord's coming.