Mark 13:6 Commentary - Whedon's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

6. Saying, I am Christ The FIRST SIGN of approaching downfall should be the numerous false deliverers and spurious messiahs, (the Hebrew word for Christs,) which should deceive many. At that period the acknowledged prophetic chronology demanded the appearance of the true Messiah so clearly that a general expectation of his advent was even then prevalent. Of this expectation impostors plentifully availed themselves; thus punishing the nation who had rejected the true one, and at the same time furnishing a SIGN of the decline of the Jewish state. Such was the false Egyptian prophet at the head of thirty thousand men, (Act 21:38,) about twelve years after our Lord’s death; and Theudas, a false deliverer, who, Josephus says, almost in our Lord’s words, deceived many. Under the procuratorship of Felix, in the reign of Nero, such impostors were so numerous that some were taken and slain almost daily. Among false Christs, distinctively, were Dositheus appearing as the Christ foretold by Moses, and Simon Magus as son of God. Josephus says, Many affirmed the time of the advent to have arrived; and Hegesippus says, Many false Christs came.